IUCAA Girawali Observatory is an optical astronomy observatory run by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune



The telescope was manufactured by Telescope Technologies Ltd.,Liverpool, UK, under a contract through the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), UK.

It was handed over to IUCAA after installation and commissioning on February 14th, 2006.

The observatory was formally inaugurated and the telescope dedicated to the astronomy community by Prof. Yash Pal on May 13th, 2006.

Technical specifications

Telescope

The main 2m telescope at IGO is made up of a primary mirror of 200 cm with f/3 and a secondary mirror of 62 cm with f/10.

It has 1 direct and 4 side Cassegrain ports with an uncorrected field of view (direct) of 6 arcminute radius


Pixels: 1340 x 1300, 20μm square

Image Scale: 97μm per arcsecond (0.2 arcsecond per pixel)

On chip binning: 2x2

Single Pixel Full Well: 300ke

Dynamic range: 16 bits

After a phase of performance and science verification programmes, the observatory opened for regular observations in November 2006.

The time for observations is allotted by TAC from October to May in two proposal cycles each of four months duration.