MRI Track 1: Development of Wide-band High-resolution Imaging Spectro-Polarimetric Explorer (WHISPER) for Goode Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory

Ground optical telescopes are a powerful tool for observations of the Sun, including its atmospheric layers such as photosphere and chromosphere. The Goode Solar Telescope (GST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) is the second largest solar telescope in the world, providing high-resolution data about the state of the Sun's atmosphere as well as spectroscopic and polarimetric measurements of the photosphere and chromosphere.

These observations are invaluable for studying disturbances on the Sun's surface such as solar flares. The project will develop the Wide-band High-resolution Imaging Spectro-Polarimetric Explorer (WHISPER) for GST. The addition of WHISPER will increase the sensitivity and fidelity of high-resolution solar measurements for GST, providing the community with a more accurate quantitative inference of the conditions in the solar atmosphere than what is possible with any other facility instrument in use at any observatory today.

WHISPER will employ an image reconstruction scheme developed for slit spectrographs to undo the effect of the residual seeing, optical aberrations and modulation transfer, allowing us to achieve the special resolution of 50 km on the Sun, as well as to restore the original image contrast and signal amplitudes. Moreover, WHISPER will capture a carefully chosen very wide spectral range that comprises a plethora of spectral lines for diagnosing the photosphere and chromosphere, thus drastically increasing the signal-to-noise ratio when inferring parameters of solar atmosphere.

This will substantially increase the ability to study solar processes including the formation of sunspots and superstrong solar magnetic fields. BBSO will continue operating GST as a community facility, with the WHISPER data to be used as the basic dataset in much Ph.D. theses research in the U.S. and worldwide. BBSO will continue to provide undergraduate students with hands-on experience in instrument development, high-resolution observations, and astronomical data analysis.

Six undergraduate students will be involved in the research at BBSO. This effort will directly impact and improve the education and training of the next generation of solar physicists and instrument engineers, as well as contribute to the revitalization and growth of the solar physics and space science communities.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.