{"id":233464,"date":"2023-03-22T19:14:39","date_gmt":"2023-03-22T13:44:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=233464"},"modified":"2023-03-22T19:14:39","modified_gmt":"2023-03-22T13:44:39","slug":"union-minister-inaugurates-asias-largest-4-metre-international-liquid-mirror-telescope-at-devasthal-in-uttarakhand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/union-minister-inaugurates-asias-largest-4-metre-international-liquid-mirror-telescope-at-devasthal-in-uttarakhand\/","title":{"rendered":"Union Minister inaugurates Asia\u2019s largest 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal in Uttarakhand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><b>Source: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The post is based on the article <\/span><b>\u201c<\/b><b>Union Minister inaugurates Asia\u2019s largest 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal in Uttarakhand<\/b><b>\u201d<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> published in<\/span><b> PIB <\/b>on <b>22nd March 2023<\/b><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is the News?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Union Minister of Science &amp; Technology has inaugurated <\/span><b>Asia\u2019s larges<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">t 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at Devasthal in Uttarakhand<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>What is the International<\/b><b> Liquid Mirror Telescope(ILMT)?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><b>Located at: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The telescope is located at an altitude of 2450 metres <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">at the Devasthal Observatory campus owned by Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES),Nainital in Uttarakhand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Working of the telescope:<\/b> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ILMT employs a 4-metre-diameter rotating mirror made up of a thin layer of liquid mercury to collect and focus light.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 The metal mercury is in liquid form at room temperature and at the same time highly reflective. It is ideally suited to form such a mirror.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 <\/span><b>The telescope is designed to survey the strip of the sk<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>y<\/strong> passing overhead each night, allowing it to detect transient or variable celestial objects such as supernovae, gravitational lenses, space debris and asteroids.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 While scanning the strip of the sky every night, the telescope will generate nearly 10-15 Gigabytes of data and the Big Data and Artificial Intelligence\/Machine Learning (AI\/ML) algorithms will be implemented for classifying the objects observed with the ILMT.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 The data will be analyzed quickly to discover and discern variable and transient stellar sources.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Countries involved: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The telescope has been set up by India in collaboration with Belgium, Canada, Poland and Uzbekistan.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 It was designed and built in Belgium at the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems Corporation and the Centre Spatial de Liez.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Significance of the telescope: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ILMT is the first liquid mirror telescope designed exclusively for astronomical observations and this is the largest aperture telescope available in the country at present and is also the first optical survey telescope in India.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>How is a liquid mirror telescope different from c<\/b><b>onventional telescopes?<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><b>Firstly,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> a conventional telescope is steered to point towards the celestial source of interest in the sky for observations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 The liquid-mirror telescopes, on the other hand, are stationary telescopes that image a strip of the sky which is at the zenith at a given point of time in the night.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 In other words, a liquid-mirror telescope will survey and capture any and all possible celestial objects \u2014 from stars, galaxies, supernovae explosions, asteroids to space debris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Secondly,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Conventional telescopes have highly polished glass mirrors \u2014 either single or a combination of curved ones \u2014 that are steered in a controlled fashion to focus onto the targeted celestial object on specific nights. The light is then reflected to create images.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 As opposed to this, the liquid-telescope is made up of mirrors with a reflective liquid, in this case, mercury \u2014 a metal which has a high light-reflecting capacity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2013 The mercury will spread as a thin layer in the container forming a paraboloid-shaped reflecting surface which will now act as the mirror. Such a surface is ideal to collect and focus light.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Thirdl<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>y<\/strong>, the difference between the two is their operational time. While conventional telescopes observe specific stellar sources for fixed hours. ILMT will capture the sky\u2019s images on all nights \u2014 between two successive twilights \u2014 for the next five years starting October 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Note:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> For protecting it from moisture during monsoon, the ILMT will remain shut for operations between June and August.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: The post is based on the article \u201cUnion Minister inaugurates Asia\u2019s largest 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal in Uttarakhand\u201d published in PIB on 22nd March 2023 What is the News? The Union Minister of Science &amp; Technology has inaugurated Asia\u2019s largest 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal in Uttarakhand What is&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/union-minister-inaugurates-asias-largest-4-metre-international-liquid-mirror-telescope-at-devasthal-in-uttarakhand\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Union Minister inaugurates Asia\u2019s largest 4-metre International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal in Uttarakhand<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1566,1738,9],"tags":[3590],"class_list":["post-233464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-factly-articles","category-science-and-technology-daily-factly-articles","category-public","tag-pib","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233464\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}