15–17 Sept 2019
Banglore
Asia/Kolkata timezone

INSIST: A Proposed Wide-Field, UV-Optical, Imaging and Spectroscopic Space Telescope

Not scheduled
15m
Banglore

Banglore

Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Banglore, India

Description

Optical imaging has been the driving force of astrophysical research, historically driven by the ground based telescopes, which still drives the ground based astronomy, with the recent surveys like the SDSS, PANSTARRS as well as the upcoming LSST. IR and UV wavelengths obtained from space are complimentary to the ground facilities. With the upcoming JSWT to compliment the IR wavelength range in the near future, a deep photometric survey in the complementary UV range is lacking for the international astronomical community. India reached a major milestone in the area of space astronomy with the successful launch and post launch operations of its first space observatory, ASTROSAT and has achieved in securing a firm foot print for Indian in the international astronomy scene. The success of this space observatory and the lessons learned has motivated to enlarge the footprint of Indian space astronomy in the international scene.
The high resolution optical/UV images have so far been provided by the Hubble Space telescope (HST) since 1990s. The high spatial resolution imaging of the HST is limited to very small fields. As the mission is approaching the end of its life time, it is unlikely to be available for a very long period. As the 2030s will produce deep sky images in the optical and IR regions, a similar coverage in the Ultraviolet are not addressed by any of the planned mission. This is where India with its capacity to launch and operate space observatories, can fill the gap. The UVIT was a capability demonstration and it is important to take this strength to create the next generation UV-¬optical observatory class space telescope in the next decade, to fill the gap in the international scene.
In order to fill the gap in the UV space astronomy, Indian astronomical community has submitted a proposal, Indian Spectroscopy and Imaging Space Telescope (INSIST), to ISRO. INSIST is an observatory class mission aims to do imaging with high spatial resolution (0.2") covers 0.25square degree FOV with the sensitivity of 28th magnitude in the UV for an exposure of 1ksec and a multi object spectroscopy feasibility with a spectral resolution of R~2000 in UV. During the design phase, various optical configurations have been considered and the merits and demerits of each design has been studied. Optical design and design challenges of INSIST will be discussed in details here.

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