In the UK, our solar community has been successful in including the European Solar Telescope (EST) as one of the high-priority future facilities in the recently published STFC Solar System Roadmap.

At the end of 2022, the Board of Directors (on which the UK sits) of EST voted to establish the EST Canarian Foundation as the interim legal figure for EST, with the goals of bringing on board the ministries and their representatives to work towards establishing an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium).

Led by Sheffield, several groups in the UK including Aberystwyth, Durham, Exeter, Glasgow and QUB have made a commitment to form a UK Universities Consortium (UKUC), raised funds and on 25 July 2023 joined the Canarian Foundation for the next 2 years. Other UK institutions, e.g., UCL, have also indicated willingness and are now looking into opportunities to contribute. Further, UKUC has also successfully secured financial support from STFC to join the Canarian Foundation.

The UK currently supports developments of future benefit to EST, including participation in the TSI (Tuneable Imaging Spectropolarimeter) design, EST Data Centre design, and the development of a solar turbulence profiler and real-time control system that has applications to the adaptive optics implementations (MCAO – Multi-conjugate adaptive optics) for both DKIST and EST.

EST is an ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) project that has been designed by a consortium of 27 partners (from academia and industry) in 14 European countries. The UK community has been involved since the project began. EST will be polarimetrically compensated, and the first solar telescope to incorporate multi-conjugate adaptive optics from inception, enabling diffraction-limited observations at an unprecedented 25 km resolution, less than the photon scattering mean-free path in the photosphere. EST will provide the most sensitive diagnostics of the thermal, dynamic and magnetic properties of the plasma in the solar atmosphere, at the highest spatial resolution, and over the most scale heights available on any solar telescope, on the ground or in space. The use of beam splitters and integral field unit spectrographs will allow simultaneous high temporal resolution 2-D spectroscopy and spectropolarimetry at multiple heights in the solar atmosphere. This is currently unachievable with any other facility.

EST will also deliver an unprecedented level of data in solar physics, of the order of Pb/day, to be managed by the EST Data Centre (DC). Here, it is foreseen that the UK will have a major role in partnership with a few European institutions in the DC. Addressing the data handling will also enable various opportunities for UK industry.

Robertus Erdelyi, on behalf of EST-UKUC… continue to the full article

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Dear all,

Please find here the latest updates with regards to STFC’s transition to the new Funding Service and the overarching Simpler and Better Funding Programme.

Kindest regards,

Astrolists

 … continue to the full article

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The deadline for proposals to the EUI and SWAP/LYRA Guest Investigator Call 2024 has been extended till November 3, 2023 (23:59 CET).

Visits should be scheduled in 2024. Details on the Guest Investigator Call 2024 can be found here: https://www.sidc.be/GuestInvestigator/GI_call_2024.… continue to the full article

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Dear Colleagues,

We thank the community for their responses to the “Future of UK Solar Physics Meetings” questionnaire. We received 59 responses, and here is a summary (the anonymous results of the survey with individual comments removed are also here):

The majority of the community wants to see UKSP/solar sessions at NAM every year, irrespective of whether an individual attends every year or not. Comments: it is important for solar physics to be part of NAM and to have links not just with MIST but with astronomy topics as well.
The main reasons for not attending NAM are: overworked, cost and too many other meetings.
A large majority (81%) would like to see UKSP organise a dedicated, stand-alone solar meeting every couple of years. April to June, or “summer,” are the best times for this.
Thus, the community wants yearly attendance at NAM and our own meeting every couple of years.
There is no strong opinion about attending a second “outside of NAM” business meeting.
In general, the community would like to see more UKSP-MIST collaboration. The council is in contact with MIST about this. There are some concerns about the dominance of “space weather” type topics over other solar physics topics, which we will also consider.
The majority want us to create or renew an online seminar series and/or training sessions. Comments: short PhD student talks might be good, or each UK group gets a monthly(?) talk slot similar to ESPOS.
Overall, groups are willing to share their seminars, so please expect an email in the next few months asking about this.

The council will work towards a solution based on the results above and share an update with the community once it is ready.

Kind regards,
UKSP Council… continue to the full article

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We need your help to update the UKSP website

The UKSP council would like to update the UKSP website. Therefore, we would like to ask the community to help with the following:

1) Public Outreach page (https://www.uksolphys.org/outreach/)
This page would be the collection of public outreach activities in the UK related to solar physics. We would like to list outreach activities which are meant to engage a large audience and to bring knowledge and expertise on the Sun to the general public. These outreach activities can take several forms, such as school presentations, workshops, public talks, lab visits, etc…
If you would like to add information about your outreach activity, please contact the Deputy Chairperson directly.

2) Seminar Speaker page (https://www.uksolphys.org/resources/seminar-speaker-list/)
This page is dedicated to listing early career lecturers, postdoctoral researchers, and PhD students who would like to give seminars at institutes around the UK.
We would particularly like to encourage PhD students and early career researchers to consider this opportunity.
Please contact the Deputy Chair if you would like your name added (with a short description of your research).

3) Mentors page (https://www.uksolphys.org/mentors/)
The UKSP community has decided to put in place a mentoring scheme. The mentors cover a range of career stages and are available to provide advice on a range of issues, e.g. jobs (applying for post-docs, promotions), applying for grants, publishing, outreach, writing up the PhD etc.
We would like to invite more people to participate in our mentoring scheme.
If you are interested in this role, please contact the Deputy Chair directly.
We note this is not an attempt to replace University mentoring schemes but should be used as an additional resource.

4) Institutions page (https://www.uksolphys.org/about-uksp/institutions/)
The page includes links to the UK institutions and their associated research groups currently undertaking and contributing to solar physics research.
We would like to add those groups which are not listed on the website yet.… continue to the full article

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The UKSP council offer free zoom licence access to the UKSP community so that PhD students to senior researchers can host their own meetings, short workshops and summer schools. We would particularly like to encourage PhD students and early career researchers to consider organising such events. The UKSP council can provide support in organising and advertising your event.

If you are interested in using the UKSP Zoom licence, then please contact Karen Meyer (kmeyer001@dundee.ac.uk) with details of your prospective meeting:
• What type of meeting, who it is aimed at.
• When the zoom licence will be required (date: from… to…).
• Details of the person who will host the meeting (name, position, institute, department, and email address).

The UKSP zoom licence is supported by a Royal Astronomical Society Grant.… continue to the full article

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Dear Colleagues,

The Commons SIT Committee has announced an inquiry into UK Astronomy with a deadline of October 27.

https://committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/3238/

However, the RAS are collating information for their own submission, and if you would like your points to be included within that submission, please email Robert Massey (rmassey@ras.ac.uk) directly by September 27 (we apologise for the short deadline).

However, if you miss this, information can still be submitted by individuals until October 27.

Kind regards,

UKSP Council… continue to the full article

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The SunPy Project is looking for new community members to become maintainers of a new magnetic field extrapolation package.
SunPy will provide mentorship in how to maintain a SunPy package.
Ideally anyone interested in the role would be familiar with the magnetic extrapolation algorithms.
If you are interested in taking on this role please comment on the SunPy discourse.

More details

The pfsspy project has recently been archived by David Stansby, it’s lead author and maintainer.
We want to thank him for his work on pfsspy and a variety of other heliophysics Python projects.

The pfsspy package is now widely used throughout the solar physics community for computing potential field extrapolations, including in several high-profile publications.
Given its wide usage, the SunPy Project believes it is important to continue to provide this functionality within the SunPy ecosystem to ensure it’s longevity.

To that end we are creating a new package within the SunPy ecosystem which, initially, will be a fork of the pfsspy package.

In the longer term, this package may expand to cover other extrapolation techniques the community has an interest in contributing.

To achieve this, we need someone who can bring some expertise on magnetic field extrapolation algorithms and who has time to dedicate to creating and maintaining this package.

The SunPy Project will provide the required package infrastructure and mentorship on package maintenance for anyone interested.
Additionally, this new package will be housed under the SunPy organization on GitHub, similar to existing affiliated packages maintained by the Project.

If you are interested in becoming a maintainer or have more questions, please post on the SunPy discourse thread linked here, or email me.… continue to the full article

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Dear Colleagues

Please be advised we are now accepting expressions of interest for the astronomy large awards scheme. All details, guidance and contact information can be found on the funding funder page here: https://www.ukri.org/opportunity/astronomy-large-awards/

The deadline for expression of interests is Tuesday 31st October by 4pm. Applications (by email) received after this time will not be accepted. Applications found not to have followed the guidance and process detailed in the link above will not be considered.

Kind regards
The Astronomy Awards Team… continue to the full article

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The Call for Applications to new STFC Science Board (PPAN) and Science Board (Facilities and Laboratories)

Science Board (PPAN): https://www.ukri.org/who-we-are/work-for-us/join-an-advisory-committee-panel-or-network/stfc-science-board-ppan-members-2/
• Science Board (PPAN) is seeking two new members in astronomy only.
• All members of Science Board (PPAN) must be based at UK-based institutions.

The deadline for applications is Monday 23 October 2023.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact joanna.bromley@stfc.ac.uk or rachel.leader@stfc.ukri.org (Science Board (PPAN))… continue to the full article

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