India Partners in prestigious TMT Telescope

Thirty Metre Telescope(TMT)

India time, the Master Partnership Agreement (MPA) for the construction of the $1.5-billion Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT), what would be the world’s largest optical and infrared telescope, was signed by the five partner countries —

1.  Canada,
2. China,
3. India,
4. Japan and
5. the U.S.

At — in Hawai. The telescope will be located just below the summit at Mauna Kea at a height of 4,050 m. The construction is expected to begin next year and the telescope is expected to become operational in 2022. Its large collecting area makes it 81 times more sensitive (measure of the faintest signal that it can detect) than the current largest ground-based telescopes.

‘India designing mirror coating system’ for TMT.

At present, India has three 2 m class optical-IR telescopes and a 3.6 m telescope waiting to be commissioned.

Some important Physics Institutes and places important in civil services view point:

• P. Sreekumar, the Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore.
• Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), Nainital.