We are delighted to welcome Professor Thomas Rimmele from the National Solar Observatory to the school as part of our 2024-25 Sir Harrie Massey Colloquia series.

Professor Rimmele will deliver a lecture titled 'The US National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope: Operations commissioning – science results and lessons learned'. An abstract and biography can be found below.

The US National Science Foundation’s 4m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on Haleakala, Maui is the largest solar telescope in the world. DKIST’s superb resolution and polarimetric sensitivity enables astronomers to explore the origins of solar magnetism, the mechanisms of coronal heating and drivers of flares and coronal mass ejections. Using solar adaptive optics DKIST provides the highest resolution images of the solar atmosphere to-date. DKIST also operates as a coronagraph at infrared wavelengths, providing crucial measurements of the magnetic field in the corona. During its Operations Commissioning Phase, DKIST has already conducted a significant number of shared-risk observations for community researchers. The complex raw data are calibrated by the DKIST Data Center located in Boulder and distributed to the science community. We’ll present an overview of DKIST and its instruments, discuss examples of first science results, and if time allows, mention a few lessons learned during the commissioning phase of this $400M project and touch on ongoing instrument developments.

Dr. Thomas Rimmele is Project Director of the 4m Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope project located on Halekakala. Designed and developed to meet the needs of critical high resolution and high sensitivity spectral and polarimetric observations of the sun, DKIST will observe with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity solar magnetism and its influence on Earth and our technological society. Dr. Rimmele received his PhD from the University of Freiburg, Germany. He is a tenured Astronomer at the National Solar Observatory. As Associate Director at NSO he is responsible for the construction and the operations of DKIST. Dr. Rimmele works closely with international partners, US Universities and National Laboratories where state-of-the-art instruments for DKIST are developed. His research interests include development of solar adaptive optics, multi-conjugate adaptive optics, high resolution imaging techniques and the study of solar magnetic fields and the origins of solar activity.