Thirty Meter Telescope | Indian perspective

Why in news?
Hawaiians are protesting against TMT construction amidst environmental concerns.

Details of TMT

• Belong to 'new technology' telescope
• Will be segmented mirror telescope 
• Being ground based TMT - limited resolution because of atmospheric turbulence
• Adaptive optics
• The systems designed to sense atmospheric turbulence in real time  - make apt corrections to beam - enable true image on ground - limited only by optical diffraction
• This will make it 12 times better than Hubble Telescope

Signed by 5 partner countries - 

• Canada, Japan, India, China, America [To remember - CJICA - 4 near Hawaii]

Indian participation 

• in 2010 as observer state
• 2014 Dec - Signed Master Partnership Agreement India as Full fledged partner
• India to give 1000 cr i.e. 10% of project
• Contribution mostly in Kind - [Telescope control systems bana ke de rahe hain]
• Will Make edge sensors
• (by giving information) which will help in better image
• Which sense relative displacement of segments due to gravity and temperature while tracking objects in the sky - this will help in moving all the 492 mirrors (by giving information) which will help in better image
• May provide a part of such mirrors
• Actuator systems
• The system which moves these mirrors
• The system which moves these mirrors
• Mirror coating system being designed by India
• Indian nodal agency will be Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore

Benefits to India

• India will get proportional time as per its contribution to cost i.e. 10%
• Opportunity to scientists
• SnT power of the world
• Better institutional capacity of India

India's present telescopes

• One two metre optical class telescope
• 3.6 m - Hanley ladakh Telescope

Other telescopes in world

• 39M E-ELT - Europen Extremely Large Telescope

Details of the Project:

Source: Indian Express