The world’s largest eye on the universe is being built in Hawaii with Indian assistance.
“All mirrors and other components are made of highly specialized ‘zero thermal expansion glass'” to prevent image blur caused by temperature changes. “The ‘Extreme Adaptive Optics’ system supports the telescope, which tracks various celestial objects, reducing disturbances caused by Earth’s atmosphere,” explained Deshmukh.
In an exciting astronomical development, the world’s largest “eye on the universe” — an Optical, Infrared, Thirty Metre Telescope (TMT) — is rapidly gaining critical support from Indian scientists, engineers, and industries at its proposed location in Maunakea, Hawaii, in the United States.
The TMT will be the world’s most massive scope ever built, costing more than $2.6 billion and involving India, the United States, Japan, Canada, and China, according to Dr. Prasanna Deshmukh, 35, one of the scientists involved in the mega-project.
Deshmukh, who is from Maharashtra’s Sangli, is the work package manager for TMT’s Primary Mirror Control System, as well as the telescope’s Actuators and Edge Sensors.
The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru, and the Aryabhat Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) in Nainital are the TMT’s Indian collaborators.
According to Deshmukh of the IIA, the TMT will be made up of 492 hexagon mirrors that will be assembled and aligned with super-high precision to pore into the farthest or deepest corners of the known Universe.
“The TMT will allow us to see beyond our Solar System to the early Universe, which is approximately 13.7 billion Light Years (LY) away. Consider this: our Milky Way Galaxy’s nearest neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, is 25.3 Lakh LYs away. Consider the TMT’s power and reach “Deshmukh told media in an interview.
Currently, the two largest telescopes – both space-based – are the Hubble Space Telescope (diameter 2.5 metres, 535 km above Earth) and the most recent James Webb Space Telescope (diameter 6.5 metres, 2021, to be around 15 lakh km far from Earth, orbiting the Sun), both of which are significantly smaller than the upcoming ground-based TMT, which will be five times larger with a diameter of 30 metres.
Scientists will get a better view of planets, stars, galaxies, exo-planets, nebulas, supernovas, or pulsars through the TMT, conduct spectroscopy of such heavy objects to study their atmosphere, find out if life exists or can thrive there, scout the possibility of a future “cool address” for earthlings, and test out the current varied hypotheses on the reality of aliens somewhere, out there…
Due to their limited size and resolution, current generation scopes operating at optical, ultraviolet or infrared wavelengths cannot see many things, but TMT opens up previously unknown ways to understand the mysteries and hidden scenes of the vast universe. It is still far from man, said Deshmukh.
Deshmukh explained how scientists measure astronomical distances (1 LY = 9 trillion km) in the universe by studying and analyzing light sources for their intrinsic luminosity (“standard candle” method) or the change in their spectrum (“red shift” method). That object and its approximate distance from Earth or the Solar System.
“TMT will aid in the investigation of all known astronomical problems or challenges that have been stalled due to a lack of powerful telescopes. Furthermore, TMT has a 50-year lifespan, giving us plenty of time before something more advanced emerges, perhaps even peering beyond Time itself!” Dr. Deshmukh explained.
He explained the TMT, saying that the primary mirror will consist of 492 hexagon mirrors supported by another 1,476 actuators, 2,772 high-precision edge sensors, and 10,332 smaller actuators that will align all the mirrors, detect the smallest deviations, and correct them to enable clear images from staggering distances in the Universe.
“All of the mirrors and other components are made of highly specialised ‘zero thermal expansion glass” to prevent image blur caused by temperature fluctuations. “The telescope will be supported by a ‘Extreme Adaptive Optics’ system to reduce disturbances caused by the Earth’s atmosphere as it tracks different celestial objects,” Deshmukh explained.
In CE 905, the Persian astronomer Abd Al-Rehman Al Sufi discovered and described the Andromeda cluster.
But it wasn’t until more than a thousand years later (in 1924) that the American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) stunned humanity by confirming that Andromeda was indeed a galaxy and that our Milky Way is just one of many galaxies dotting the dark Universe.
However, after 1990, the world was thrown into a frenzy as the Hubble Space Telescope discovered billions of new galaxies scattered throughout the Universe, with more discoveries expected from the James Webb Space Telescope and mind-boggling possibilities through the TMT.
Aside from IUCAA, IIA, and ARIES, approximately 50 Indian industries are contributing to the mega-venture through various components and the direct or indirect participation of approximately 200 scientists, engineers, experts, technicians, and others.
The India TMT Optics Fabrication Facility (ITOFF), located near Bengaluru, became operational in January 2021 and will produce 84 (of the 492) mirrors for TMT.
“These mirrors are cutting-edge… Each mirror can take up to two to three weeks to manufacture, so it will take approximately four years to build all (84) mirrors here, plus those produced in the United States, China, and Japan “Deshmukh stated.
According to current plans, the TMT will “open its eye” to gaze at the Universe by 2032, a deadline that has been pushed back from the original 2028.