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
2026 observing campaign schedule Recent news
September : Arrival of a new control-command engineer at THEMIS. |
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Overview of telescope status
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The THEMIS telescope and its science
Technical & scientific information about THEMIS Observing with THEMIS
Information for research scientists wishing to observe with THEMIS THEMIS Scientific research & results |
THEMIS image of the month
The 2026 THEMIS observation season started this month of September with four ~1 week campaigns. With the new magnetic inversion pipeline (based on the UNNOFIT code) of the Fe I @ 630,2 nm spectropolarimetric observations, THEMIS is now able to provide rough vector magnetic field maps in a few tens of minutes after the observations.
The present image displays a sample of September 2026 maps of the line-of-sight component of the vector magnetic field of different solar structures: quiet sun, filament corridors, plages, inter-spot regions and sunspots. Blue means that the photospheric magnetic field is orientated toward the observer, while red means away. In all these observations, the spatial resolution is smaller than 0.5“ (hence smaller than 400 km on the Sun). This is more than 4 times better in spatial resolution than the classical magnetograms provided by space instruments.
These high-spatial and high-spectral resolution observations, “raison d'être” of ground based telescope like THEMIS, enables a more detail understanding of the solar magnetism that drives solar activity.
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THEMIS telescope management
Internal pages for the THEMIS team (requires a webpage access login)
Previous THEMIS front page
© 2026 CNRS-THEMIS
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