10-06-2022 | 17:25 PM
India’s first Liquid Mirror Telescope
India has set up its first-ever International 'liquid mirror telescope' (ILMT) in Uttrakhand.
It became the world’s first liquid-mirror telescope to be commissioned for astronomy.
The telescope has been set up at an altitude of 2450 meters at Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute in Uttarakhand.
The telescope is owned and operated by Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Science (ARIES).
Countries involved
The major instrumentation funding was jointly provided by Canada and Belgium while India will be responsible for the operations and upkeep of the telescope.
Joint Collaboration of countries- India, Belgium, Canada, Poland and Uzbekistan.
Different from Conventional telescope
ILMT comprises mirrors with a reflective liquid (ILMT has mercury as reflective liquid). On the other hand, a conventional telescope uses highly-polished glass mirrors.
A LMT is a stationary telescope whereas a conventional telescope moves along the direction of the object of interest in the sky.
ILMT will be capturing images of the sky on all nights, conventional telescopes observe specific objects in the sky for fixed hours only.
Significance
Enormous amount of data (10-15 GB/night) will be generated. This will be significant for the global scientific communities.
Latest computational tools, like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and big data analytics will be deployed for screening, processing and analyzing the data.
