GREGOR is a solar telescope that has been equipped with a 1.5m primary mirror and is located at the Teide Observatory on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It’s currently the third-largest solar telescope in the world, after the Big Bear Observatory and the McMath-Pierce solar telescope. Its primary goal is to observe the solar photosphere and chromosphere at visible and infrared wavelengths. Read more for two videos and additional information.
The telescope boasts a high-order adaptive optics (AO) system with a 256-actuator deformable mirrors and a 156-subaperture Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. It was recently upgraded with two off-axis parabolic mirrors and captured stunning close-up images of multiple sunspots.
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This was a very exciting, but also extremely challenging project. In only one year we completely redesigned the optics, mechanics, and electronics to achieve the best possible image quality,” said physicist and GREGOR lead scientist Lucia Kleint of the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics (KIS).