Himalayan telescope raises dust

Himalayan telescope raises dust
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

New Delhi, July 2: Setting up of a new two-mt class telescope at Hanle in the Leh region -- the first among the three small telescopes coming up within the next five years in the country --- has drawn sharp criticism from some astronomers who say there is hardly any need to build similar telescopes in three different sites.

The Hanle telescope, managed by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bangalore will be followed by two more small two-mt class telescopes.

The first one by Pune-based Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) will be located near Pune to be followed by another at Devasthal in Uttar Pradesh by Tata Institute of Fundamental Resarch (TIFR) of Mumbai and Uttar Pradesh State Observatory (UPSO), Nainital.

IIA and IUCAA telescopes are likely to become operational by the year end while the TIFR-UPSO one will come up by 2005.

A section of astronomers in Delhi, Pune and Bangalore say that three similar telescopes are not needed for the country due to the shortage of astronomy students.

But IIA director Ramnath Cowsik said three telescopes might actually help in attracting students to astronomy.

"Opportunities need to be created for young talents and the three telescopes may do just that. Moreover, 2-mt class telescopes are bread and butter of basic astronomy as a lot of advanced research can be done with these smaller telescopes," he said.

Describing the utilities of three telescopes, Department of Science and Technology (DST) secretary V S Ramamurthy said while the IIA and TIFR-UPSO instruments will be used for research, the IUCAA telescope is meant for education.

But some astronomers, on condition of anonymity, said these three telescopes will virtually put an end to the proposed 4-mt National large optical telescope (NLOT) facility conceived in the 80s to facilitate optical astronomy research in India.

"Instead of having a national facility, we will be having three small telescopes run by individual institutes which is not a wise idea," said a Delhi-based astronomer.

The resources could be pooled to create the NLOT for international quality research, he said.

Although the existing smaller telescopes have produced many valuable results, the optical astronomers in India are in the need of a medium-sized (3.5 to 4-mt) telescope at a good site, eminent astronomer Govind Swarup from National Centre for Radio Astronomy (NCRA) in Pune, said.

"It would have been advantageous if India had a 3.5 or 4-mt class telescope with adaptive optice (a technique to cut down harmful effects of environmental aberrations)," he said.

However, Cowsik said a decision about the NLOT would be taken after observing the performance of Hanle telescope.

But critics say that after spending about Rs 30 crore for the Hanle project, the Centre will not spend more money to build a bigger telescope. "It (Hanle telescope) marks the effective demise of NLOT," said the Delhi-based astronomer.

Ramamurthy also said that DST currently has no plans to pursue the NLOT as it needed huge investment. But it was a DST committee in the late 80s headed by B V Sreekanthan, a former TIFR director that had recommended the 4-mt telescope.

The Sreekanthan Committee report said "there is a clear need for setting up a most modern large-sized telescope in the best possible site well before the end of this century."

"Investments and initiatives have to be therefore, taken during the Eighth Plan so that this telescope is realised by the end of the Ninth Plan," said the report, excerpts of which was published in the journal Current Science in 1990.

Following the recommendation of the committee, IIA was asked to coordinate the project along with other institutes.

"But the support at the national level was withdrawn after a few years because scientists were dissatisfied with the "IIA methodology in managing the project," critics said.

It is only after the withdrawal that IIA started working on a 2-mt telescope, which is an "afterthought" and not the original idea, the scientists maintained.

But Cowsik said the decision to build the 2-mt telescope was taken following the suggestions of another DST committee headed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Kasturirangan in 1995.

The Hanle telescope will be located at a site about 25 km from Leh at a height of 3,000 metres above the sea level. Likely to be operational by November, the optical-cum-infrared telescope will be remotely controlled from Bangalore and Hoskote in Karnataka, Cowsik said.