India's first liquid mirror telescope setup on Uttarakhand's Devasthal hill

The first liquid mirror telescope in the country and the largest in Asia commissioned atop Devasthal a hill in Uttarakhand will now keep a watch on the overhead sky to identify transient or variable objects such as supernovae gravitational lenses space debris and asteroidsThe Indian Liquid Mirror Telescope ILMT will 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 overheadBuilt by astronomers from India Belgium and Canada the novel instrument employs a 4meterdiameter 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 Government of India in Nainital district UttarakhandThe scientists from the three countries spun a pool of mercury which is a reflective liquid so that the surface curved into a parabolic shape It is ideal for focusing light A thin transparent film of mylar protects the mercury from wind The reflected light passes through a sophisticated multilens optical corrector that produces sharp images over a wide field of view A largeformat electronic camera located at the focus records the imagesPaul Hickson from the 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 objectsILMT is the first liquidmirror telescope designed exclusively for astronomical observations installed at the Devasthal Observatory of ARIES said Dipankar Banerjee director ARIESDevasthal Observatory now hosts two fourmeter class telescopes the ILMT and the Devasthal Optical Telescope DOTThe telescope was designed and built by the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems AMOS Corporation and the Centre Spatial de Liege in BelgiumThe ILMT collaboration includes researchers from ARIES in India the University of Liege and the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Belgium Poznan Observatory in Poland Ulugh Beg Astronomical Institute in Uzbek Academy of Sciences and National University of Uzbekistan University of British Columbia Laval University University of Montreal University of Toronto York University and University of Victoria all in CanadaThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever