Aperture Increase Options for the Dutch Open Telescope

Abstract

This paper is an invitation to the international community to participate in the usage and a substantial upgrade of the Dutch Open Telescope on La Palma (DOT, \url{http://dot.astro.uu.nl}). We first give a brief overview of the approach, design, and current science capabilities of the DOT. The DOT database (\url{http://dotdb.phys.uu.nl/DOT}) now contains many tomographic image sequences with 0.2-0.3 arcsec resolution and up to multi-hour duration. You are welcome to pull them over for analysis. The main part of this contribution outlines DOT upgrade designs implementing larger aperture. The motivation for aperture increase is the recognition that optical solar physics needs the substantially larger telescope apertures that became useful with the advent of adaptive optics and viable through the DOT's open principle, both for photospheric polarimetry at high resolution and high sensitivity and for chromospheric fine-structure diagnosis at high cadence and full spectral sampling. Realization of an upgrade requires external partnership(s). This report about DOT upgrade options therefore serves also as initial documentation for potential partners.Comment: in press,"Physics of Chromospheric Plasmas" (Coimbra), ASP 368, 573 (2007