Mount Abu InfraRed Observatory

Observation

Mount Abu has about 200 cloud-free nights of which 150 nights a year can be used for photometric observations. It has a typical seeing of ~1.2 arcsec. Observations are closed during Indian monsoon period (Late June to mid-September).

Facilities

Mount Abu Observatory is equipped with a 1.2m Infrared Telescope along with the following back-end instruments: NICMOS Infrared Camera and Spectrograph, Imaging Fabry-Perot Spectrometer, large format optical CCDs, Optical Imaging Polarimeter and Fibre-linked Grating Spectrograph. A new high resolution optical spectrometer, PRL Advanced Radial-velocity All-sky Search (PARAS) to detect extrasolar planets using the radial velocity technique began observation in April 2012.

In addition to these, a 50 cm telescope, Automated Telescope for Variability Study (ATVS), is now functional to monitor variable sources, e.g. AGNs, variable stars, Comets etc. and another 43 cm telescope for ground-based photometry. MIRO has its own Aluminizing plant for polishing of the telescope mirrors, a liquid nitrogen plant for providing liquid nitrogen to cool the IR detectors to reduce thermal noise.

A new facility, created by LEOS, ISRO will become operational. This facility will have a one-meter diameter telescope with sophisticated optics and back-end instruments assembled by the Laboratory for Electro-Optics Systems (LEOS), Bengaluru. The new facility, known as the Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (EODSS) system, will track space debris, mainly consisting of inactive satellites, electronic parts of instruments, leftovers from rocket launch and other such junk in space.