Rafael Rebolo, Director of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and Oskar von der Lühe, Director of the Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics (KIS) in Freiburg (Germany) signed, at Aarhus (Denmark) on May 27th an agreement regulating the operations of the German solar telescopes at the Teide Observatory in Tenerife. This agreement, which was signed during the 75th meeting of the International Scientific Committee (CCI) of the Canary Island Observatories, establishes the operations of the Vacuum Tower Telescope (VTT) and the GREGOR, the largest solar telescope in Europe, as coming under the KIS in collaboration with a named group of German research institutes and universities, until 2022.

This agreement between the two institutions also gives an impulse to work programmes whose objectives are specialized training, outreach, and scientific collaboration on projects such as the European Solar Telescope (EST) which will be the largest in the world of its type, and which should be installed in the Canary Islands. In addition, during the period in which the agreement holds, the KIS will contribute economically to general scientific assistance with the German solar installations, and the IAC will collaborate in their use and development and will receive 20% of the observation time with the telescopes.

This agreement serves to bring up to date the agreement signed between the IAC and the German Foundation for Scientific Research (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) in 1983, by which the DFG was responsible for the installation and the operation of three solar telescopes, of which only the VTT is still functioning in the same conditions.