Cosmic Penguin
Geek Penguin in GTO
After trying out new rockets, a spacecraft to Mars (which just celebrated one Earth year of operations in Mars orbit) and various new targets, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is now about to stretch their operations into a new territory - the operation of orbital astronomy observatories.
Their first space based telescope is aptly named the Astrosat - a 2 tonne satellite targeting the shorter wavelengths of the EM spectrum, the ultraviolet and X-ray sections, which are very hard to study from the ground, but provides vital clues to the workings of neutron stars, active galaxies and quasars, just to name a few high energy sources around the sky. While not that sharp eyed as the famous Chandra observatory or other orbital observatories, its 5 instruments observes in quite a broad range of frequency and so may be useful as yet another source of observations and deep sky surveys in the more energetic part of the universe.
The launch of Astrosat on board ISRO's PSLV rocket is coming up in half a day's time tomorrow at 04:30 UTC. My launch report will come very soon! :tiphat:
Their first space based telescope is aptly named the Astrosat - a 2 tonne satellite targeting the shorter wavelengths of the EM spectrum, the ultraviolet and X-ray sections, which are very hard to study from the ground, but provides vital clues to the workings of neutron stars, active galaxies and quasars, just to name a few high energy sources around the sky. While not that sharp eyed as the famous Chandra observatory or other orbital observatories, its 5 instruments observes in quite a broad range of frequency and so may be useful as yet another source of observations and deep sky surveys in the more energetic part of the universe.
The launch of Astrosat on board ISRO's PSLV rocket is coming up in half a day's time tomorrow at 04:30 UTC. My launch report will come very soon! :tiphat:
