The European Solar Telescope (EST) project has made a number of further important steps in the past few months. The UK Universities Consortium (UKUC) was formed last year and is led by U of Sheffield in the legal framework – the EST Foundation Canarias (EST-FC) – to represent the interest of our solar community in the UK. At present, UKUC is made of Aberystwyth University, Universities of Exeter, Glasgow, Sheffield and QUB with additional interest expressed by a few additional UK institutions.

We are pleased to report that funding was successfully raised and UKUC is now in the process of settling the current annual financial contributions to the Foundation.

Some recent key organisational and technical developments are:

• The director and Administrator of EST Foundation were sought, interviews with shortlisted applicants were conducted and recommendations by the Executive Cttee (EC) were made, and are awaiting approval by the Board of Trustees (BoT)
• Pier Optical Path Design is updated
• Polarimetric Calibration and Alignment Assembly
• EST Control System

EST-FC has just expanded with the joining of the University of Graz. This is excellent news as it demonstrates the increasing importance of the project.

For more about some recent updates, including communication news and the EST photo gallery, please read the latest issue of the EST Newsletter here:  https://www.est-east.eu/newsletter

If you have any queries about the EST-FC project and how to join UKUC, please contact Robertus who is the UKUC representative on the BoT of EST-FC.

Robertus Erdelyi (on behalf of EST UKUC, a member of the EST-FC EC)
robertus@sheffield.ac.uk