Indian Telescope Captures Stunning Image of Building-Sized Asteroid's Close Approach

Space exploaration or studying the celestial objects is one of the most exciting jobs in the world. At one side it has the fun of watching the movements of space objects, and at the other hand it also comes with the responsibility of gathering the accurate data and keeping our blue planet safe from any outer things. 

In the 21st century India has come up as one of the most successful space explorer country with the launch of Mars Orbiter Mission of the Mangalyaan, the Chandrayaan mission, successfully launching the Aditya L1 to study of Solar upper atmospheric dynamics and also the study of chromospheric and coronal heating.  

And now growing more and achieving new an impressive feat, the GROWTH-India telescope at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Ladakh successfully captured a building-sized asteroid during its closest approach to Earth, according to a report by the Times of India. The telescope managed to track the asteroid's rapid movement, resulting in an image where the background stars appear as streaks of light.

The event's image was shared on the social media platform X by Varun Bhalerao, an astrophysicist at the Space Technology and Astrophysics Research (STAR) lab at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. Bhalerao posted, "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."

Check out the viral post:

What is the GROWTH-India Telescope?

The GROWTH-India telescope holds the distinction of being India's first fully robotic optical research telescope. It is situated at one of the world's highest astronomical observatories at 4,500 metres in Ladakh. This 0.7m wide-field telescope is part of a joint venture by IIT Bombay and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bengaluru.

The project received full funding from India's Department of Science and Technology-Science and Engineering Research Board (DST-SERB) under the Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) project, which is administered by the India-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). Additionally, it has received generous financial and technical support from the IIT Bombay batch of 1994 alumni.

Specialisation and Collaborative Efforts

Specialising in time-domain astronomy, the GROWTH-India telescope focuses on the study of explosive transient objects such as asteroids and comets. It is a crucial part of the Global Relay of Observatories Watching Transients Happen (GROWTH), a multilateral collaborative initiative aimed at observing transient events in the universe.

The GROWTH program is a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), a United States government agency dedicated to supporting fundamental science and engineering, with the exception of medical sciences.