To observe and spot transient or uncertain objects such as supernovae, gravitational lenses, space debris, and asteroids, India places a unique liquid mirror telescope installation atop a mountain in the Himalayas. The telescope is delegated at Devasthal, a hill in Uttarakhand that will aid in surveillance of the several galaxies and other astronomical references just by looking at the strip of sky that passes above.
The telescope is built by astronomers from India, Belgium and Canada. Its structure includes a rotating mirror with a diameter of 4 metres and is made up of a thin film of liquid mercury to collect and focus light. It is placed at an altitude of 2450 metres at the Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES). ARIES is an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India in Nainital district, Uttarakhand.
The efficiency of the telescope.
The liquid mirror telescope is particularly sensitive even to diffused and faint objects. The scientists have spun a pool of mercury which is a reflective liquid, protected by a thin transparent film of mylar, making the surface curved into a parabolic shape, ideal for focusing light. It is equipped with a multi-lens optical corrector that produces sharp images over a wide field of view and a large-format electronic camera at the focus that records the images.
India’s First Liquid mirror telescope!
Indian Liquid Mercury Telescope is the first liquid-mirror telescope built exclusively for astronomical observations. ARIES now hosts two four-meter class telescopes, the largest aperture telescopes functional in the country. The ILMT will provide us with exemplary data and will be used in numerous researches, providing more than 10 GB of data every night which will be analyzed to reveal stellar sources. This data will also be used to perform a photometric and astrometric variability survey over normally 5 years.
