THEMIS Solar Telescope
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The “Télescope Héliographique pour l’Étude du Magnétisme et des Instabilités Solaires” (THEMIS) of CNRS-INSU is a 1-meter-class optical solar telescope, primarily dedicated to studying solar magnetism and the dynamical processes within the Sun’s atmosphere (such as sunspots and solar flares). THEMIS can also perform observation of near-Sun objects such as Mercury and comets. THEMIS is located at the Teide Observatory of IAC, with a base office in La Laguna, in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Click for information on: How to reach THEMIS locations ; How to contact the THEMIS team |
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Overview of telescope status
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The THEMIS telescope and its science
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Observing with THEMIS
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Schedule of 2025 observing campaign
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THEMIS image of the month: August 2025
August 2025
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During the 2025 observation campaign of Brigitte Schmieder and Arek Berlicki, THEMIS targeted a small prominence. Prominence are emitting structures that can be observed at the solar limb, beyond the outer edge of the Sun's disk. Prominences and filaments are two aspects of an unique physical feature: a domain of cold chromosphere like plasma, magnetically confined in the much hotter solar corona. While this structure appears as dark when seen in contrast with the disk, and is then called a filament, it appears bright in contrast to the plane of sky. As a magnetised structure filament/prominence can erupt, releasing plasma and material toward the solar system. Understanding how the magnetic structure them is fundamental to comprehend their stability or lack off. THEMIS is mainly a scanning spectrograph instrument, i.e. a very thin slit scans the region of interest, in order to obtain high resolution spectrograms. THEMIS images are thus reconstructed. While scanning, THEMIS is thus very sensitive to the effect of turbulence and the reconstructed image have necessarily a lower resolution that direct imaging. On the other hand, THEMIS can deliver simultaneous images at different wavelength.
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While adaptive optics can generally be used to significantly improve on disc observations, such as with our own Themis AO, AOs fail when trying to observe over the limb because no structure there can be tracked by the AO. Recently our colleagues of the U.S. National Science Foundation National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology, observed beautiful prominence dynamics with the Goode Solar Telescope thanks to their new coronal adaptive optics in a direct imaging approach.
At THEMIS, during our 2025 campaign we tried a different approach. While we were scanning a prominence at the limb, we use TAO on an offset region which is close to the limb while still on the disc. TAO is a simple AO which isoplanatic region (region where most of the AO correction is done) is limited. Since the isoplanatic region and the region of scientific interest are far away, the AO correction may be limited at the prominence. We were however very please to see that TAO still provide significant improvements. As can be seen in this image of the month, the turbulence induced motions (in the direction of the slit) which are present when TAO is off, are strongly reduced when TAO is switched on. The limb appears much smoother and the prominence better resolved.
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