Himalayan Chandra Telescope has been used in many coordinated international campaigns to monitor stellar explosions, comets, and exo-planets, and has contributed significantly to these studies. It is celebrating its 20th birthday crediting itself with 260 research papers using data obtained from it.

In the cold, dry desert of Ladakh, 4500 meters above the mean sea level, for two decades, the 2-m diameter optical-infrared Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) has been scanning the night sky in search of stellar explosions, comets, asteroids, and exo-planets.

Telescope is a 2.01 meters (6.5 feet) diameter optical-infrared telescope named after India-born Nobel laureate Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar. It contains a modified Ritchey-Chretien system with a primary mirror made of ULE ceramic which is designed to withstand low temperatures it experiences. The telescope was manufactured by Electo-Optical System Technologies Inc. at Tucson, Arizona, USA. The telescope is mounted with 3 science instruments called Himalaya Faint Object Spectrograph (HFOSC), the near-IR imager and the optical CCD imager. It is remotely operated via an INSAT-3B satellite link which allows operation even in sub-zero temperatures in winter.

The telescope, which is at par with some of the older, well established, international 2m class telescopes telescope equipped with 3 science instruments, has provided data that has been used in the Ph.D. theses of 40 students (18 from IIA and 22 non-IIA), and currently, 36 students (16 from IIA and 20 non-IIA) pursuing Ph.D. degree, are collecting data with the HCT.

The area of research covers a wide range of topics, from solar system objects to cosmology. Some of the thrust research areas are study of solar system bodies like; comets, asteroids, the study of star formation processes and young stellar objects, study of open and globular clusters and variable stars in them, abundance analysis of elements in the atmosphere of evolved stars, star formation in external galaxies, Active Galactic Nuclei, stellar explosions like novae, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts and so on. The telescope has been used in many coordinated international campaigns to monitor stellar explosions, comets, and exo-planets, and has contributed significantly to these studies.  

“Building, maintaining, and effective scientific use of the Himalayan Chandra Telescope has given our observational astronomy community experience and confidence to be the creators and international partners in the best of next-gen optical telescopes,” said Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)