MSV-2035 Astronomy Document - Inside Design - FINAL - FINAL

Astronomy & Astrophysics 60 MEGA SCIENCE VISION-2035 observations over the wavelength range of ~4000 - 9000Å. 1-meter class telescopes: The 48-in refractor at the Rangapur observatory and the 1-meter telescopes at Kavalur and Nainital were set up in the late 1960s - early 1970s. Two decades later, the 1.2-meter telescope at Gurushikhar was set up as India's first infrared telescope. Two 1.3-meter telescopes were added in the past decade, one at Devasthal and another at Kavalur. A 0.7-meter, wide-field, robotic telescope, the GROWTH-India Telescope (GIT) was recently installed at IAO. The 1.04-meter Sampurnanand telescope (ST) at Nainital is equipped with a CCD imager for photometry, an imaging polarimetry, a fast photometer and a low resolution spectrograph, while VBO's 1.02-meter Carl Zeiss Telescope (CZT) is equipped with a photopolarimeter and a low resolution spectrograph. The Mount Abu Gurushikhar Observatory's 1.2-meter telescope is equipped with a suite of instruments such as a two channel fast near-IR photometer for lunar occultation, fiber-linked astronomical grating spectrograph, a Fabry-Perot spectrograph, optical polarimeter, near-IR infrared camera spectrograph, and an advanced high resolution spectrograph. The two 1.3-meter telescopes at Devasthal and Kavalur are equipped with CCD imagers. The GIT offers wide field multiband imaging / / capabilities with a field of viewof 45 X45 . The 1-meter class telescopes have contributed significantly to (i) the understanding of origin and evolution of different classes of star clusters, (ii) physics of star forming regions (iii) photometric studies of galaxies, (iv) intranight variability of different classes AGNs, (v) followup studies of nova outbursts, GRBs and other transients and (vi) observations of transiting exoplanets. The ARIES-ST observed the first ever optical counterpart detected in a GRB event in 1999. The 1-meter telescopes have also been used very effectively in the study of objects in our own solar system through occultation observations. VBO's CZT was instrumental in the discovery of atmosphere around Jupiter's moon Ganymede, and also in the discovery of rings around Uranus (in the 1970s). The GIT is dedicated for the observations of transients and is contributing significantly in the search for optical counter-parts of gravitational wave sources, optical follow-up of gamma-ray events and other fast transients, monitoring of supernovae, and observations of novae inM31. 2-meter class telescopes: The establishment of the Kavalur Observatory (later named as Vainu Bappu Observatory, VBO) led to the indigenous development of the 2.34-meter Vainu Bappu Telescope (VBT). When installed and commissioned at Kavalur in 1986, VBT was the largest optical telescope inAsia. The VBT is equipped with a suite of instruments that includes the prime focus imager at the prime focus, Cassegrain focus instruments such as a low resolution spectrograph, speckle interferometer, a fiber-linked integral field spectrograph and a prime focus fiber-fed high resolution spectrograph providing spectra at resolutions R ~ 30000 - 60000. IIAestablished a high altitude observatory, the IndianAstronomical Observatory (IAO) in Hanle, Ladakh. IAO hosts the 2-meter Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT), located at an altitude of 4400m above mean sea level. The telescope has been in operation since 2000 and is a critical facility for Indian astronomers today. The telescope, dome and instruments are controlled remotely using a dedicated satellite link from IIA's CREST campus at Hosakote, Bengaluru. An instrument cube at the Cassegrain focus enables mounting of 4 instruments on the side ports, and one on the on-axis ports. The available instruments are an optical faint object spectrograph (HFOSC) for imaging and low