The Hanle site is higher than Denver University's observatory at Mt. Evans, at an altitude of 14,107 feet (4,300 meters) in Colorado's Rocky Mountains and ranked until now as the world's highest observatory.
"The high altitude, extreme cold, and very dry weather will make Hanle a top astronomy site," said Dr Ramanath Cowsik, director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bangalore, and a visiting professor at the McDonnell Center for Space Science at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
The IIA spent $8 million on the observatory and the 2-meter telescope, built by EOS Technologies Inc. in Tucson, Arizona. The telescope saw its "
" early October and will be ready for routine optical and infrared observations by spring next year."The Hanle telescope fills a wide gap in observational facilities in this part of the globe," Cowsik told SPACE.com. There are no big telescopes with apertures 3.5 meters (138 inches) or larger between Siding Spring Mountains in Australia and the Canary Islands in the Atlantic.
India's department of science and technology that funded the project expects the Hanle site to attract researchers from elsewhere in the world. Astronomers from Japan and the U.S. have already expressed interest in building new instruments for the Hanle Observatory.
"This has the potential to emerge a major center of activity," said India science and technology secretary Professor V.S. Ramamurthy.
Dr. Peter Strittmatter, an astronomer at the Steward Observatory at Tucson, Arizona, has proposed building a larger 236-inch (6-meter) telescope at Hanle. "The focus would be on sub-millimeter and mid-infrared astronomy to study interstellar clouds, star formation and active galactic nuclei such as quasars," Strittmatter told SPACE.com.
"The speed at which the 2-meter telescope has been installed has removed worries about possible operational difficulties at this remote, high-altitude site," Strittmatter said.
The telescope may be remotely operated via satellite links from an IIA center near Bangalore. Researchers there say a major science objective would be to build statistics for supernovae and gamma-ray bursts by observing a large number of such events.
"There are always time constraints when we're working with space telescopes or even with large ground telescopes," said Dr Tushar Prabhu, IIA researcher and Hanle project manager. "You only get a narrow window of opportunity to do what you want to do and it's hard to build statistically significant data."
"This kind of astronomical statistics may be used to find new parameters that are correlated with supernovae energy output," said Prabhu. While, brightness has been used to classify supernovae, there may be other parameters such as the velocity of expansion or the decay rates of their light curves, he said.
The IIA also plans to use the telescope to obtain precise observations of intensity variations during gamma-ray bursts in a bid to unravel the mechanism that power these events. "We'd like to study the host galaxies and find out whether there are specific galaxies where such bursts tend to occur," said IIA director Cowsik.
Japanese astronomers who visited Hanle last month have proposed to build an infrared camera at the Hanle observatory. Japan plans to launch a space-based observatory called ASTRO F for large-scale surveys at infrared wavelengths by the year 2004.
"The infrared detector that we propose to build at Hanle is intended to provide ground-based support and follow-up studies of interesting objects discovered by ASTRO F," Dr Munetaka Ueno, professor of astronomy at the University of Tokyo told SPACE.COM.
"Infrared observations are important in studying very distant galaxies and help us track galactic evolution," Ueno said.
Thermal radiation from the telescope itself is the main source of noise during infrared observations. The extreme cold temperatures at Hanle would mean a major reduction of noise. "This is probably the world's best site for infrared astronomy," said Ueno.
However, not everyone is pleased with the arrival of the new telescope. Some Indian astronomers are angry that India bought the telescope from the U.S. instead of building it indigenously.
"We have proven telescope-building expertise in India," said an Indian astronomer. During the 1980s, Indian researchers had teamed up with local industry to successfully build a 78-inch (2.3-meter) telescope at an observatory in southern India.
"Now, this [import] indicates a decline in the spirit of technological innovation," said Professor A P Jayarajan, former head of the optics division at the IIA. However, an IIA spokesperson said the import was considered necessary to acquire the latest technology and to cut short time to begin observations.
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