Liquid Mirror Telescope: India’s First In Uttarakhand; Know Everything

The nation’s first and biggest liquid mirror telescope, which was recently installed atop Devasthal, a hilltop in Uttarakhand, now will monitor the sky for transitory or fluctuating items such as asteroids, space debris, gravitational lenses, and supernovae.

The Indian Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) will aid in sky surveying, allowing observers to see several constellations and other celestial sources simply by gazing at the stretch of sky that crosses overhead.

Telescope: Characteristics

The unique apparatus, which was built by researchers from Canada, Belgium and India, collects and focuses light using a 4-meter-diameter spinning mirror consisting of a thin sheet of liquid mercury.

It’s at the Devasthal Observatory campus of the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), an independent organization there under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), GOI in Nainital district, Uttarakhand, at a height of 2,450 metres.

The three nations’ experts spun a pool of mercury, a reflecting liquid until the surface twisted into a parabolic form. It’s perfect for concentrating light. The mercury is shielded from the wind by a narrow mylar layer. The diffraction pattern is processed by a multi-lens visual corrector, which creates clear images across a wide range of views. The photos are captured using a modern electronics camera mounted at the focus.

Telescope: Measuring The Effectiveness

A specialist on liquid mirrored technology, Paul Hickson of the University of British Columbia in Canada, said, “The earth’s orbit causes the pictures to wander across the sensor, but the camera compensates for this motion electrically. This method of operation improves the telescope’s monitoring effectiveness and tends to make it more responsive to pale and hazy objects.”

“The ILMT is the world’s first liquid-mirror telescope dedicated solely to astronomical studies,” stated Dipankar Banerjee, Director of ARIES’ Devasthal Observatory.

The ILMT, as well as the Devasthal Optical Telescope, are two 4-meter class telescopes now housed at Devasthal Observatory (DOT).

The Centre Spatial de Liege in Belgium and the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) Corporation built and designed the instrument.