Upgraded GMRT opens up space for path-breaking discoveries, says Yashwant Gupta

The upgradation work of the world’s largest low-frequency radio telescope, Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) located at Narayangaon around 80km from Pune, is now complete. The work which began in 2014 and completed in 2019, will help provide missing answers to the history of the universe as the new capabilities would grant GMRT access to a plethora of space imagery.

The GMRT is built and operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA)-Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) .

 Explaining the need of the upgrade to the common man, officials of NCRA said that it has helped improved the sensitivity of the observatory by three times, making it capable of detecting much fainter and faraway sources in the vast expanse of the universe, hence, looking at a new wave of discoveries.

Explaining the technicalities of the upgrade, Yashwant Gupta, centre director, NCRA, said, “We have modified the entire receiver system, the electronics and hardware that process data and the corresponding software which handles a higher volume of data.The new upgrades will allow exploring a wider range of frequencies. With the upgraded GMRT, it is possible to adjust the configuration to look at any desired frequency in the range of 100 megahertz to 1,500 megahertz. In order to work on a higher frequency, we needed a major technological change. Earlier, our receiver could extract only 32 megahertz, however, with the new technology in place, it can now extract a maximum of 400 megahertz. This increase in capability is due to the upgradation.”

In order to handle high frequencies, one needs to handle the receiving data, hence the control room functioning needs to be upgraded in order to process it. Finally, when you are making the image, the volume of data you are handling is much larger, so the software needs to be more sophisticated, even to store that data you need a larger storage. New findings can now be expected more frequently, and the upgrade is expected to usher in a new wave of discoveries,” added Gupta.

About GMRT 

There are 30 fully steerable antennas of 45 metre diameter each in ‘Y’ shape spread over 25 km region of land here at GMRT. Govind Swarup, a global pioneer of radio astronomy is the man behind building the GMRT, while it started its routine operations in 2000. The telescope has been in operation in the international arena for over a decade now, and is used by astronomers from all over the world, with more than 50 per cent of users coming from outside India. 

A star is born

A team of astronomers at NCRA , on January 3, discovered a ’mysterious’ ring of hydrogen gas around a distant galaxy, using the GMRT. The ring is much bigger than the galaxy it surrounds and has a diametre about four times that of our Milky Way, according to NCRA researchers. The galaxy discovered (named AGC 203001), is located about 260 million light-years away from earth. Omkar Bait, the lead author of the study who along with prof Yogesh Wadadekar, and five others – all co-authors – were part of the study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.