GREGOR


A New Telescope for Solar Physics

The AIP participates with a 25% share in the German consortium to construct the new solar telescope GREGOR. Partners are the Kiepenheuer-Institut für Sonnenphysik in Freiburg (50%) and the Institut für Astrophysik Göttingen (25%). The AIP cooperates with the Czech Astronomical Institute Ondrejov.


This photo shows the telescope structure mounted on top of the building (photo: H. Balthasar).


A brief summary

GREGOR is a new type of a solar telescope with an aperture of 1.5m. It replaces the former 45cm Gregory-Coude-telescope in the Observatorio del Teide on the Canarian island Tenerife. GREGOR is specially designed for high resolution spectropolarimetry of solar fine structures. To overcome the influences of the telluric atmosphere, GREGOR is equipped with an adaptive optics system. The telescope will be able to resolve 70 km on the Sun (corresponding to 0.1 arcseconds). The investigation of these small structures is important to understand the basic processes of the interaction of the magnetic field and the turbulent plasma motions on the Sun.
GREGOR is designed as an open telescope to achieve that its parts have the same temperature as the surroundings to avoid local turbulences. To ensure this, the main mirror will be a light-weighted Zerodur body.

GREGOR will also be used for spectroscopy of bright stars.

You can download a poster, size A4, postscript format:

english version deutsche Version



Detailed information on GREGOR and the partner institutes can be found here:

.
GREGOR-pages at KIS

more images of the structure



Contribution of AIP

The mountings for mirrors M3 and M4 are manufactured in the workshop of the AIP. Mirror M3 elongates the effective focal width of the telescope and is important to focus the instrument. Mirror M4 deflects the beam coming from M3 into the horizontal axis of the telescope. The positions of M4 is just behind the secondary focus F2 and the infalling beam passes it through the central hole. The mounting of M4 is combined with the housing of the polarimetric calibration unit which is designed and manufactured by the AIP.

You want to see the optical path of GREGOR?

optical path



Images of the parts manufactured at the AIP and the AIP-team you find here:

M3-Unit M4-Unit Calibration-Unit Team



GREGOR can also be used for stellar investigations. AIP is preparing a special spectrograph in cooperation with the Kiepenheuer-Institute Freiburg and the Astronomical Institute Ondrejov.

GREGOR@night
(PDF-document in German)






GREGOR Image Gallery AIP Homepage general GREGOR pages


page updated by H. Balthasar, 12 August 2009.