Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope:
The Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), a unique space telescope developed by Pune’s Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) has been delivered to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
- Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) telescope is one of the seven payloads on Aditya-L1.
- It will provide full disk images of the sun in 2000 to 4000 A wavelength range which has never been obtained.
- It will allow us to record images in this wavelength crucial for maintaining the Ozone and Oxygen content in the atmosphere of the Earth.
- It will also measure the UV radiation hazardous for skin cancer.
- It will address fundamental questions such as the existence of a higher-temperature atmosphere above the cooler surface of the Sun and the origin and variation of near-ultraviolet radiation and high-energy solar flares.
- It will help in the measurement of solar radiation from Hard X-ray to Infrared, as well as in-situ measurements of particles in the solar wind, including the Sun’s magnetic field at the L1 point.
- It is expected to last five years.
- ISRO funded the initial Rs 25 crore required for the hardware, a small portion of the overall project.
Aditya-L1 Mission:
- It is India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the Sun.
- The spacecraft will be placed in a halo orbit around the first Lagrange point, L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth towards the Sun.
- A satellite around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without occultation/eclipses.