Funding for UK access to the Swedish Solar Telescope

Currently, the UK solar physics community has formal access to ground-based facilities via its guaranteed time on the Dunn Solar Telescope (DST) at the US National Solar Observatory Sacramento Peak, due to the provision of the Queen's University Belfast (QUB) and STFC-funded ROSA/HARDcam instrumentation suite. In addition, via the EU-funded SOLARNET agreement, the UK also had access to the Swedish Solar Telescope (SST), with 20 days per year available. The SOLARNET agreement ended in 2016, and the UK groups plan to apply for renewal for a further 3-year period (2017 - 2020). However, this means that during 2016 - 2017 we have no access to the SST.

The DST is an outstanding facility for the UK solar community via the no-cost provision of ROSA/HARDcam and other instruments, plus the US link to DKIST. However SST does provide, from a science aspect, an excellent complementary facility to the DST. For example, the new CHROMIS instrument can observe the top of the solar chromosphere/bottom of the transition region, nicely complementing the DST focus on photospheric and chromospheric phenomena. The UK solar physics community has also very successfully exploited the SOLARNET time on the SST. Given this, the UK community is very keen to continue to maintain access to the SST during 2016 - 2017, and the SST management is willing for us to have a 1-year 'bridging agreement' for SST time. Specifically, we may purchase 20 days of observing time for the UK community for 2016 - 2017, and then apply for SOLARNET support for SST access in future years.

In this proposal we therefore seek a contribution from STFC (£22,500 at 80% fEC) to purchase the SST time, with the matching funds coming from QUB, Armagh Observatory, Northumbria University, the University of Sheffield and University of Glasgow.

Impact related to this proposal will be primarily in public understanding of science and other outreach activities in solar physics. Queen's University and other UK solar physics groups are highly active in outreach linked to their solar physics programmes. For example, Queen's University hosts annual events for 5th- and 6th-form schoolchildren, as well as public talks, which discuss our research on the solar atmosphere.