IIT Bombay, IIA sign MoU to extend operation of telescope in Ladakh

The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay signed an MoU with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) for extending the ongoing collaboration for operations and scientific utilisation of the GROWTH-India Telescope in Ladakh.

The GROWTH-India telescope was set up jointly by IIA and IIT Bombay under a project supported by DST-SERB and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, and became operational in 2018. Under this partnership, the organisations agreed to jointly continue the operations of the project.

IIT Bombay students will continue to remotely use this robotic telescope to develop tools for observations and data processing.

The operations of the GROWTH - India telescope are supported by contributions from the alumni of IIT Bombay's Class of 1994.

The Growth-India Telescope is a 0.7m wide-field telescope set up in Ladakh through a joint partnership between IIA and IIT Bombay.

The main focus of the interdisciplinary project is to undertake continuous studies of cosmic sources that have rapidly-varying properties like emission from gravitational wave events, young supernovae and near-earth asteroids.

It is the country’s first fully-robotic optical telescope and one of the few such facilities present outside of Europe and the USA. It has been instrumental in the research work carried on by IIT Bombay.

The MoU signed on 30 August, 2021, will be valid for 5 years, according to a press statement issued here.

Prof. Subhasis Chaudhuri, Director, IIT Bombay said, “IIT Bombay aims to be a leader in astronomical research and this prestigious partnership with IIA brings us one step closer to our mission.”

Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam, Director, IIA, said: “The GIT, located in the Indian Astronomical Observatory, Hanle, of the IIA, is a facility dedicated to the study of transients. The wealth of expertise and experience of the IIA team in running telescope facilities in one of the best sites in the world combined with the young and enthusiastic team of IIT Bombay is a great collaboration that has already produced fascinating results in the last three years".

The IIA is the nodal center for the Indian participation in the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project, and hosts India-TMT coordination center. The Institute is currently developing the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph to be flown in the upcoming Aditya-L1 mission.