In August 2021, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay virtually signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), for extending the research collaboration on “GROWTH – India Telescope”, for a period of 5-years.
i.At present, IIT Bombay students remotely use the telescope to develop observatory & data processing tools, and study various astronomical bodies.
- Notably, IIT Bombay students discovered – ‘2020 QG’, the closest known asteroid that flew past the Earth without impacting.
About GROWTH- India Telescope:
i.In 2018, IIA & IIT Bombay jointly set-up the ‘GROWTH-India Telescope’, a 0.7m wide-field telescope in Ladakh, the project is supported by DST-SERB and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum.
ii.It is India’s 1st fully-robotic Optical Telescope, that is used to study various cosmic sources like – Gravitational waves, young supernovae and near-earth asteroids.
Projects under IIA:
- IIA develops the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph for the Aditya-L1 mission.
- IIA is India’s nodal center for ‘Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)’ project. TMT is a project under international partnership between CalTech, Universities of California, Canada, Japan, China and India.
Recent Related News:
IIT Bombay was the Top ranked Indian University as per the QS World University Rankings 2022, where Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in USA was ranked as the World’s No. 1 University (for the 10th consecutive time).
About IIT Bombay:
Director – Subhasis Chaudhuri
Established in 1958 with technical expertise from USSR
Location – Mumbai, Maharashtra
About Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA):
Director – Annapurni Subramaniam
Location – Bangalore, Karnataka
IIA Observatories
- Vainu Bappu Observatory – Javadi Hills, Tamil Nadu
- Indian Astronomical Observatory – Leh, Ladakh
