To Better Understand Why Sun Gets Angry, India To Build Massive Solar Telescope In Ladakh
NDTV
The telescope is to be installed on the banks of the Pangong Tso Lake in Merak, Ladakh, at an altitude of around 4,200 metres
The Sun is the harbinger of life on Earth, but we understand so little of our nearest star. The Sun occasionally gets very angry; it then unleashes massive solar storms that take down or burn satellites and electronic equipment on Earth. To track the Sun, India seeks to set up the National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) in Ladakh.
Spearheading the project is professor Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, who says site characterisation has been undertaken and land has been acquired. Only the final clearance is needed for this massive and much-needed project to get off the ground. It is almost a decade late.
According to the IIA, the National Large Solar Telescope will be a two-metre class optical and near infra-red (IR) observational facility. It is designed to address an array of key scientific issues related to the origin and dynamics of solar magnetic fields at a spatial resolution of 0.1-0.3 arc-second.
