ASTROSAT: UPSC Daily Important Topic | 2 April 2022

ASTROSAT

AstroSat’s Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope spots rare ultravioletbright stars in a massive intriguing cosmic dinosaur in the Milky Way.

□ SIGNIFICANCE.

◇ Such UV-bright stars could be the reason for the ultraviolet radiation coming from old stellar systems such as elliptical galaxies which are devoid of young blue stars.

□ ABOUT :-

◇ AstroSat is India’s first multi-wavelength space telescope.

◇ It has five telescopes seeing through different wavelengths simultaneously — visible, near UV, far UV, soft X-ray and hard Xray.

◇ Onboard the AstroSat is a 38-cm wide UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT), which is capable of imaging in far and near-ultraviolet bands over a wide field of view.

◇ AstroSat was launched on 28 September 2015 by ISRO into a near-Earth equatorial orbit.

◇ A multi-institute collaborative project, involving IUCAA, ISRO, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bengaluru).