Hemanth

Indian Institute of Astrophysics

NLST

Isro

Ladakh

C ity’sis involved in two significant space projectsTwo state-of-the-art projects undertaken by a city-based institute will play a crucial role in studying the sun, which exercises a determining influence upon humanity.The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is involved in the development of two such projects: the National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) and the Aditya- L1 space mission to study the sun.While the two meteris touted to be the world’s largest and most powerful solar telescope, the Aditya- L1 satellite will be launched byin 2019 along with six payloads for observation of solar corona, photosphere, chromosphere and solar wind.The NLST will carry out high-resolution studies of the solar atmosphere and the instruments of telescope is currently being developed at the IIA.“The NLST is going to be India’s future ground-based solar facility which will enable solar scientists to understand solar dynamics with better precision. Aditya - L1 is a space mission primarily looking at outer atmosphere of the sun whereas the NLST will provide crucial information from the lower atmosphere of the sun. A combination of information from these projects will bridge the understanding of the entire solar atmosphere,” said Prof Dipankar Banerjee, project coordinator, NLST.The telescope will come up a Merak near the Pangong Lake in theregion. The project site has already got environmental and defence clearance. The satellite is expected to become operational in about four years and Aditya - L1 will be launched around the same time.“The telescope will help in studying the variations in the Sun. We need to understand the variations in the solar output as our very existence depends upon the sun. After all the energy comes from the sun,” said Banerjee who is also the co-principal investigator of Aditya-L1.The synergy between Aditya space mission and NLST will be an ideal opportunity for scientists to study about the devastating solar flares which can impact satellite communication in the space, electric grids on earth and also long-haul flights.Merak has an altitude greater than 4,000 meters that have extremely low water vapour content and are unaffected by monsoon. Though there are telescopes in Europe and the west, the site where the telescope would come up will ensure that Indian scientists will get to observe anything dynamic on the solar surface much before the western world.