The GROWTH-India telescope at Indian Astronomical Observatory in Ladakh captured a building sized asteroid as it approached closest to Earth, the Times of India reported. The telescope tracked the asteroid's rapid movement, making the background stars look like streaks of light.
The image of the event was shared on social media platform X by Varun Bhalerao, an astrophysicist at Space Technology and Astrophysics Research (STAR) lab at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
"Last night, the GROWTH-India Telescope caught this 116m, building-sized asteroid on its closest approach to earth! We tracked the rapid motion of the asteroid as it zipped across the sky at just 10x lunar distance. The rapid motion makes background stars look like streaks." the scientist posted.
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What is a GROWTH-India telescope?
It is India's first fully robotic optical research telescope. It also has the honour of being positioned in one of the world's highest astronomical observatories at 4,500 meters in Ladakh. The 0.7m wide-field telescope is part of a joint venture by IIT Bombay and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru.
{{/usCountry}}It is India's first fully robotic optical research telescope. It also has the honour of being positioned in one of the world's highest astronomical observatories at 4,500 meters in Ladakh. The 0.7m wide-field telescope is part of a joint venture by IIT Bombay and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru.
{{/usCountry}}The project was fully funded by India's Department of Science and Technology-Science and Engineering Research Board (DST-SERB) under the Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) project, administered by India-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF).
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It is also supported by generous financial and technical help from the alumnus of IIT Bombay's batch of 1994. It specialises in time-domain astronomy, which studies the explosive transient objects like asteroids and comets in space and universe.
The telescope is a part of a multilateral collaborative initiative known as the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH) to observe transient events in the universe.
GROWTH programme is a five-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a United States government agency whose mission includes support for all fields of fundamental science and engineering, except for medical sciences.