Ongoing projects

» TEL-AVIV UNIVERSITY ULTRAVIOLET EXPLORER

TAUVEX is an Indo-Israeli Ultraviolet Imaging Experiment that will image large parts of the sky in the wavelength region between 1400 and 3200 Å. The instrument consists of three equivalent 20-cm UV imaging telescopes with a choice of filters for each telescope. Each telescope has a field of view of about 54' and a spatial resolution of about 6" to 10", depending on the wavelength. TAUVEX will be launched into a geostationary orbit as part of ISRO's GSAT-4 mission in 2009.
TAUVEX is a collaborative effort between the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (PIs: Jayant Murthy and Kameswar Rao) and Tel Aviv University (PIs: Noah Brosch and Hagai Netzer) with the scientific data open to all Indian and Israeli scientists. Further information may be obtained from the P.I.s or by writing to tauvex@iiap.res.in.

» The WORLD SPACE OBSERVATORY-ULTRAVIOLET (WSO-UV)

WSO-UV is a multipurpose observatory, made by a 1.7 m aperture telescope, capable of high-resolution spectroscopy, long slit low-resolution spectroscopy, and deep UV and optical imaging. WSO-UV has three instruments: ISSIS (Imaging and Slitless Instrument for Surveys providing imaging/slitless spectroscopy (resolution 300) in the range from 1100 Å to 7500 Å with spatial resolution 0.1 arcsec and field of view ~ 4 arcmin), HIRDES (a High Resolution Doucle Echelle Spectrograph providing resolution 55,000 in the range 1100-3300 Å), LSS (a Long Slit Spectrograph providing spectral resolution 1,500 in the range 1100-3300 Å). The WSO-UV mission will last for five years with a planned extension of five years more.  Launch is intended in 2014.

The project is run by an international consortium led by Russia and involving  Spain, Germany, China and Ukraine. 

Projects under study

1. THE FRESNEL INTERFEROMETRIC IMAGER (FII)
   A high resolution imaging/spectroscopic facility that works from the Far Ultraviolet to the Infrared providing unprecedented spatial resolution in Space. The mission addresses several themes of the Cosmic Vision Plan: Exoplanet study, Evolution of astrophysical disks, Star Formation Activity in the Universe and the physics of AGNs. The mission is basically a general-purpose lightweight telescope, but using a novel optical concept based on interferometry, which yields high angular resolution, high dynamic range and field, while releasing constraints on positioning and manufacturing of the optically active elements. The proposal has been submitted for a Class L mission.
   


2. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY LARGE-APERTURE SPACE TELESCOPE (ATLAST)
   ATLAST is a set of mission concepts for the next generation of UVOIR space observatory with a primary aperture diameter in the 8-m to 16-m range. The architectures are a telescope with a monolithic primary mirror and two variations of a telescope with a large segmented primary mirror. This approach provides us with several pathways to realizing the mission, which will be narrowed to one as our technology development progresses.ATLAST could be ready to start its Phase B as early as 2018.
   


3. MODERN UNIVERSE SPACE TELESCOPE
   The Modern Universe Space Telescope (MUST) is a 10 meter, diffraction limited optical-ultraviolet telescope that crosses a new threshold in terms of sensitivity, imaging resolution and scientific return. The optical/UV is, and will remain, the most powerful bandpass for studying physical processes in the modern (local and low redshift) universe. The MUST observatory will be robotically assembled at sun-earth L2, paving the way for a mission architecture that will be scalable to even larger mirror concepts in the future.
   


4. STELLAR AND GALACTIC ENVIRONMENT survey (SAGE)
   A high resolution soft X-ray and Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) spectroscopy mission to carry out a survey of Stellar and Galactic Environments (SAGE). The payload is based on novel diffraction grating technology which has already been proven in sub-orbital space mission and which is ready to fly on a satellite platform with a minimal development. The proposal has been submitted for a Class M mission.
   


5. STELLAR IMAGER (SI)
   The Stellar Imager (SI) is a space-based, UV/Optical Interferometer (UVOI) designed to enable 0.1 milli-arcsecond (mas) spectral imaging of stellar surfaces and of the Universe in general. The individual mirrors in this design are fabricated as ultra-smooth, UV-quality flats which are actuated to produce the extremely gentle curvature (f/1000–f/10000) needed to focus light on the beam-combining hub that is located at the prime focus from 1–10 km distant. The focal length scales linearly with the diameter of the primary array, i.e., a 100 m diameter array corresponds to a focal length of 1 km and a 1000 m array to a focal length of 10 km. The typical configuration has a 500 m array diameter and 5 km focal length (f/5000 curvature).