The kick-off metting of the SOLARNET II project was held on January 24th 2019. This project aims at integrating the major European infrastructures in the field of high-resolution solar physics in view of the realization of the European Solar Telescope (EST). The SOLARNET II project will be conducted over the next 4 years, involving 36 partners from 16 countries.
EST is a next generation solar telescope that the the European solar physics community plans to build in the Canary Islands. The project is managed by the European Association for Solar Telescopes (EAST), which was founded in 2006 and now includes members from 18 European nations. Switzerland is represented in the EAST by IRSOL. Since 2016, EST has been part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), a strategic instrument dedicated to develop the scientific integration of Europe.
The Swiss participation in SOLARNET is quite significant, the main participant being Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), while IRSOL and Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) are third parties. The Haute Ecole d’Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud (HEIG-VD) is also participating to the project.
The contribution of these institutions can be summarized as follows.
The Piz Daint Supercomputer at CSCS will be made available to the solar community to promote numerical investigations of the solar atmosphere, including magneto-hydrodynamic and radiative transfer simulations.
USI and IRSOL will organize a summer school under the title “Solar
spectropolarimetry: From real to virtual observations“. IRSOL is also working on an innovative technology capable of performing high precision absolute polarimetry with low systematic errors. Finally, the HEIG-VD is involved in the work package devoted to the development of a high-performing adaptive optics device.