The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) marked the celebration of 10 years of operation of the UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on board AstroSat by organising an academic workshop on Thursday.
The UIVT is the primary payload on board AstroSat, India’s first dedicated space observatory, launched on September 28, 2015, by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
The UVIT was designed, assembled, tested, and delivered by the IIA.
“Since UV rays are absorbed by our atmosphere, it can only be observed using space telescopes. The UVIT is India’s first UV space telescope, and is the only operational telescope capable of observing in the far-UV apart from the Hubble Space Telescope,” said Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of IIA and Calibration Scientist of UVIT.
The UVIT has led to a number of important discoveries, and is being used by astronomers in India and abroad to this day. It is unique in the world in combining a large field of view and a superior spatial resolution of the sky.
“The UVIT is a twin telescope system. One of them observes the universe in the nearultraviolet (NUV; 200-300 nanometres) and visual bands (vis: 320–550 nanometres), and the other observes in the far-ultraviolet (FUV; 130-180 nanometres),” said C.S. Stalin, in charge of UVIT Payloads Operation Centre.
Its combination of a large field of view and high spatial resolution better than 1.5 arcseconds (better than GALEX/NASA) makes it a unique instrument for astronomy-related discoveries.
The workshop also highlighted some of the key discoveries and science highlights from the UVIT observations, which include discovery of hot compact companion stars of Be stars and Blue Straggler Stars in clusters, feedback effects in active galactic nuclei traced by star formation, novae in the Andromeda galaxy, discovery of extended UV disks in dwarf galaxies and planetary nebulae, detection of emission from distant galaxies at redshift of 1.42, correlations between UV and X-ray emission from active galactic nuclei, and characteristics of young star formation in galaxies.
It was also highlighted that the UVIT has observed 1,451 targets in the sky and in the last 10 years of operation, it has led to about 300 research articles and 19 PhD thesis.
Published – December 04, 2025 07:55 pm IST
