India has achieved a new milestone in astronomy with the inauguration of Asia's largest 4-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) in Devasthal, Uttarakhand on March 21, 2023. This telescope is the first of its kind designed exclusively for astronomical observations and is also the first optical survey telescope in India.
What makes this telescope unique is that it uses a rotating mirror made of liquid mercury to collect and focus light from the sky. Mercury is a metal that stays liquid at room temperature and has high reflectivity, making it ideal for forming such a mirror. The telescope scans a strip of the sky passing overhead each night, allowing it to detect transient or variable celestial objects such as supernovae, gravitational lenses, space debris, and asteroids.
The ILMT generates huge amounts of data every night, which will be analysed using big data and artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms to classify the objects observed with it. The data will also enable deep photometric and astrometric variability surveys that will reveal new insights into the nature and evolution of these objects.
The ILMT is located at an altitude of 2450 meters at the Devasthal observatory of Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), which also hosts a 3.6-meter optical telescope that can perform rapid follow-up observations of the newly-detected sources. The ILMT project is a collaboration between ARIES, Department of Science & Technology (DST), Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), and several other national and international institutions.
The inauguration of the ILMT was done by Dr. Jitendra Singh, Minister of Science & Technology and Space, who said that this observatory places India at a different and much higher level of ability to study the mysteries of the skies and astronomy and to share them with the rest of the world.