Researchers from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, have demonstrated the ability to manipulate the vibrations of a drum of nanometre scale thickness — realizing the world’s smallest and most versatile drum. This work has implications in improving the sensitivity of small detectors of mass — very important in detecting the mass of small…
Novel Functionalized Nanomaterials for CO2 Capture
Climate change due to excessive CO2 levels is one of the most serious problems mankind has ever faced. This has resulted in abrupt weather patterns such as flood and drought, which are extremely disruptive and detrimental to life, as we have been witnessing in India in recent years. Mitigating rising CO2 levels is of prime…
Clocking the Rate of a Supermassive Black Hole
A recent observational campaign involving more than two dozen optical telescopes and NASA’s space based SWIFT X-ray telescope allowed a team of astronomers to measure very accurately the rotational rate of one of the most massive black holes in the universe. The rotational rate of this massive black hole is one third of the maximum…
First Light From Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC) Instrument Onboard ASTROSAT
ASTROSAT is India’s first dedicated science space mission which was launched on 28 September 2015. The Large Area X-ray Propositional Counter (LAXPC), designed and developed at TIFR, Mumbai, is one of the major payloads on ASTROSAT. The LAXPC instrument became fully operational on 19 October 2015 for the first time in space. A cluster of…
Astrosat’s Soft X-ray Telescope Sees First Light
The Soft X-ray focusing Telescope (SXT) onboard Astrosat, India’s first satellite dedicated to astronomical observations, saw its first light from an astronomical source on Oct. 26, 2015, after the camera door was opened at 06:30UT. The telescope door covering the optics had already been opened 10 days earlier. The SXT is India’s first X-ray telescope…
Photos of the Day: India Launches First Astronomical Satellite
The first Indian astronomy satellite Astrosat was launched on September 28th, 2015, by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) from Sriharikota, on a PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle) rocket. Astrosat has unprecedented capability to simultaneously observe cosmic objects in visible light, the ultraviolet waveband and the entire X-ray waveband from very low energy to very…