The National Large Solar Telescope (NLST) is a
Gregorian multi-purpose open telescope
proposed in 2010 to be built in
Merak village in Ladakh in India and aims to study the sun's microscopic structure.
The
Indian Institute of Astrophysics is the nodal agency charged with various scientific bodies like the
Indian Space Research Organisation
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national List of government space agencies, space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), ...
(ISRO), Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational-Sciences,
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a leading research Institute under the Department of Atomic Energy of the Government of India. It is a public deemed university located at Navy Nagar, Colaba in Mumbai. It also has a centres in ...
(TIFR) and
Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) also participating.
Location
The proposed site for the location of the telescope is Merak village in Ladakh, India. The village is near
Pangong Lake
Pangong Tso or Pangong Lake (; zh, s=班公错, p=Bān gōng cuò; ) is an endorheic lake spanning eastern Ladakh and West Tibet situated at an elevation of . It is long and divided into five sublakes, called ''Pangong Tso'', ''Tso Nyak'', ...
.
Telescope
NLST is proposed to be on-axis
alt-azimuth Gregorian multi-purpose open telescope with the provision of carrying out night time stellar observations using a spectrograph.
It hopes to resolve features on the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
of the size of about 0.1 arcsec. The focal plane instruments are to include a high-resolution polarimeteric package to measure polarization with an accuracy of 0.01 per cent, a high-spectral-resolution spectrograph to obtain spectra in 5 widely separated absorption lines simultaneously, and high-spatial-resolution narrow-band imagers in various lines.
[Singh, J. Proposed National Solar Telescop]
Journal of Astrophysics & Astronomy, Vol. 29, No. 1 - 2, pp. 345 - 351
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See also
*Lists of telescopes
This is a list of lists of telescopes.
*List of astronomical interferometers at visible and infrared wavelengths
*List of astronomical observatories
*List of highest astronomical observatories
*List of large optical telescopes
*List of largest i ...
* List of solar telescopes
*Indian Astronomical Observatory
The Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) is a high-altitude astronomy station located in Hanle, India and operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. Situated in the Western Himalayas at an elevation of 4,500 meters (14,764 ft), ...
References
{{Portal bar, India, Astronomy, Stars, Spaceflight, Outer space, Solar System, Education, Science
Solar telescopes
Science and technology in Ladakh
Buildings and structures in Ladakh