Partial solar eclipse observed by SDI

23 October 2014. The images show a large Sunspot that appeared two days earlier. The SDI telescope uses the Sun as a guide star to keep its image to be well-projected onto the entrance fibres to the spectrograph. As it is equipped with a guiding video camera, it allows us to observe any other events of interest like the partial solar eclipse in Arizona on October 23 which lasted from 14:21 to 16:45 MST with a maximum of the obscuration up to 33% at 15:37 MST (UTC-7).
Partial solar eclipse observed by SDI

SDI image of a partial solar eclipse on 23 October.

PEPSI is a high-resolution echelle spectrograph recently installed on the 2x8.4m Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) on Mt.Graham in Arizona and designed to obtain spectra in integral light from the Nasmyth focal station or polarized spectra with polarimeters located at the Gregorian focus of the telescope.

As an additional functionality, PEPSI uses a small 1cm binocular Solar telescope located outside the LBT in order to feed the spectrograph with the solar disk integrated (SDI) light with a resolving power of 270 000 over the whole optical spectral range. The purpose of this instrument is to take high signal-to-noise Solar spectra continuously on every day basis over the whole solar cycle to study the pressure and gravity modes of solar pulsations in high resolution, as well as, long term line profile variation over solar cycle.

 

 


The key topics of the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) are cosmic magnetic fields and extragalactic astrophysics. A considerable part of the institute's efforts aim at the development of research technology in the fields of spectroscopy, robotic telescopes, and e-science. The AIP is the successor of the Berlin Observatory founded in 1700 and of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam founded in 1874. The latter was the world's first observatory to emphasize explicitly the research area of astrophysics. Since 1992 the AIP is a member of the Leibniz Association.