Indian scientists create technology to improve Thirty Meter Telescope

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), one of the biggest ground-based telescopes, is expected to have improved function with the creation of a new online tool by Indian scientists. The TMT is scheduled to go online in the next ten years.

An extensive catalogue of Near Infrared (NIR) stars will be created with this innovative technology, which is essential for the telescope's Adaptive Optics (AO) system.

The Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the TMT together represent the future of ground-based astronomy.

India is an important partner in the TMT project, with the India TMT Center at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru (IIA) spearheading the national collaboration.

Ground-based telescopes suffer difficulties because of atmospheric distortion, which reduces image quality.

The TMT's Adaptive Optics System (AOS), also known as the Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS), seeks to mitigate these distortions.

Dr. Sarang Shah of the IIA highlighted that the Narrow Field Infrared Adaptive Optics System (NFIRAOS) will use a Laser Guide Star (LGS) facility to create artificial guide stars by projecting up to nine lasers into the sky. To account for atmospheric effects, the system requires feedback from three real stars known as Natural Guide Stars (NGS).

IIA researchers and collaborators developed a new automated code that can calculate the expected near-infrared magnitudes of stellar sources found in various optical sky surveys. This tool is crucial because there is currently no comprehensive catalog that can consistently offer NGS for all sky regions.

According to Dr. Smitha Subramanian, a faculty member at IIA, the team used multi-band optical photometry from the Panoramic Survey telescope and Rapid Response System (PAN-STARRS) to detect and predict near-infrared magnitudes of stars. The method was validated with data from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky (UKIDSS) survey, which achieved over 85% accuracy in near-infrared (NIR) magnitude predictions.