A first-of-its-kind Asia's largest liquid mirror telescope in the country atop Devasthal hill in Uttarakhand’s Himalayan range will now help in surveying the sky making it possible to observe several galaxies and other astronomical sources just by staring at the strip of sky that passes overhead.
The telescope will keep a watch on the overhead sky to identify transient or variable objects such as supernovae, gravitational lenses, space debris, and asteroids. It is built by astronomers from India, Belgium and Canada.
The novel instrument employs a 4-meter-diameter rotating mirror made up of a thin film of liquid mercury to collect and focus light. It is located at an altitude of 2450 metres at the Devasthal Observatory campus of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) in Nainital, Uttarakhand. Prof. Paul Hickson (University of British Columbia, Canada), an expert on liquid mirror technology, said , “The rotation of the earth causes the images to drift across the camera, but this motion is compensated electronically by the camera. This mode of operation increases observing efficiency and makes the telescope particularly sensitive to faint and diffuse objects.”
“ILMT is the first liquid-mirror telescope designed exclusively for astronomical observations installed at the Devasthal Observatory of ARIES,” said Prof. Dipankar Banerjee, Director, ARIES.
Prof. Banerjee mentioned that Devasthal Observatory now hosts two four-meter class telescopes – the ILMT and the Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT). Both are the largest aperture telescopes available in the country.