Solar Telescope Gallery
Europe has a very long tradition in solar physics research. Since Stonehenge until today, the continent has hosted numerous observatories and facilities designed to study and understand the Sun.
This gallery contains 378 high-quality pictures of 24 European telescopes and observatories currently in operation. This material may be useful for education and outreach purposes. All the images can be downloaded freely under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. We request you give proper credit to the authors and their institutions if you use these pictures for your own project.
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EST Image Gallery
See how EST will be through images and 3D animations
A drone's eye-view
Watch the solar telescopes from impressive perspectives
PIC DU MIDI
The solar observations performed at the Observatoire du Pic du Midi are done with two different telescopes, the Lunette Jean Rösch and the CLIMSO coronograph, located on the eastern part of the peak. They are operated by Université de Toulouse.
EINSTEIN TOWER
The Einsteinturm was the first solar tower telescope constructed in Europe in the early 1920s. It was used to detect the gravitational redshift predicted theoretically by Einstein, with no success. However, the observations led to a two-stream model for the solar granulation.
VTT
The German Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) is operated by the Leibniz-Institut für Sonnenphysik (KIS) in cooperation with the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) and the Max-Planck Institute für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS). It offers several large optical laboratories.
GREGOR
Operated by the Leibniz-Institut für Sonnenphysik in partnership the AIP and the MPS, is Europe's largest solar telescope. It observes the Sun at near-infrared wavelengths to collect data from the photosphere and the overlying chromosphere.
THEMIS
The THÉMIS telescope, owned by CNRS/INSU (France), is located at the Observatorio del Teide in Tenerife, 2400 metres above sea level. With a 90 cm primary mirror, THÉMIS is currently the fourth largest solar telescope in the world.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
