Monday, August 15, 2016

World's Largest Telescope Unlikely to Find Home in India


The telescope is part of an ambitious international project to discover more about our universe.
One of the potential alternate sites for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), proposed for the Indian town of Hanle, has less advantageous characteristics than other places Indian Minister of State for Science and Technology Y. S. Chowdary said before parliament.
"Hanle site has lower seeing values of 0.9-1.2 arc sec as compared to the alternate sites in Chile and Canary Islands of Spain (La Palma) which have seeing values of 0.55 arc sec.
Thus, scientifically, Hanle has less advantageous characteristics for hosting a mega telescope like the TMT in comparison to the other alternate sites."
Indian participation in the TMT project is being jointly funded and overseen by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). TMT was originally set to be installed at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the US.
The construction work for TMT at Mauna Kea was started but had to be stalled due to revocation of a permit by orders of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

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