The 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope: a brief history and some preliminary scientific results

Jean Surdej; Bhavya Ailawadhi; Talat Akhunov; Ermanno Borra; Monalisa Dubey; Naveen Dukiya; Jiuyang Fu; Baldeep Grewal; Paul Hickson; Brajesh Kumar; Kuntal Misra; Vibhore Negi; Anna Pospieszalska-Surdej; Kumar Pranshu; Ethen Sun

arXiv · 2311.05623

The 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope: a brief history and some preliminary scientific results

Jean Surdej·Bhavya Ailawadhi·Talat Akhunov·Ermanno Borra·Monalisa Dubey·Naveen Dukiya·Jiuyang Fu·Baldeep Grewal·Paul Hickson·Brajesh Kumar·Kuntal Misra·Vibhore Negi·Anna Pospieszalska-Surdej·Kumar Pranshu·Ethen Sun

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Abstract

The present article is based upon an invited talk delivered at the occasion of the inauguration of the 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT) which took place in Devasthal (ARIES, Uttarakhand, India) on 21st of March 2023. We present hereafter a short history of the liquid mirror telescopes and in particular of the 4m ILMT which is the first liquid mirror telescope entirely dedicated to astrophysical observations. We discuss a few preliminary scientific results and illustrate some direct CCD images taken during the first commissioning phase of the telescope. We invite the reader to refer to the series of ILMT poster papers published in these same proceedings of the BINA3 workshop for more details about the instrument, operation, first observations, performance and scientific results.

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Jean Surdej, Bhavya Ailawadhi, Talat Akhunov, Ermanno Borra, Monalisa Dubey, Naveen Dukiya, Jiuyang Fu, Baldeep Grewal, Paul Hickson, Brajesh Kumar, Kuntal Misra, Vibhore Negi, Anna Pospieszalska-Surdej, Kumar Pranshu, Ethen Sun. 2023-11-08. The 4m International Liquid Mirror Telescope: a brief history and some preliminary scientific results. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.05623

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