Asia's biggest telescope ARIES launched at Devasthal in Uttarakhand

On 30 March 2016, Prime minister Narendra Modi and Belgian Prime minister Charles Michel remotely launched Asia’s biggest telescope, the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) which is located at Devasthal near Nainital in Uttarakhand. The telescope is the product of an Indo-Belgian collaborative effort and was assisted by the Russian Academy of Sciences. It will replace Vainu Bappu Observatory in Kavalur, Tamil Nadu to be Asia’s largest ground-based optical telescope.

Highlights:

·         It is the largest optical telescope of its kind in Asia.

·         It will be used to study star structures and magnetic field structures of stars.

·         India produced this telescope in collaboration with a Belgian company called AMOS (Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems) to build and install the mirrors in 2007.

·         The telescope with a 3.6-metre-wide primary mirror will collect light from its field of view and focus it onto a 0.9-metre secondary mirror from where it will be diverted to various detectors for analysis. This arrangement, called the Ritchey-Chrétien design.