IIA Marks 10 Years of UVIT Operations on AstroSat

05 Dec 2025 CW Team

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) has recently celebrated 10 years of operation of the UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT), the primary payload aboard AstroSat, India’s first dedicated space observatory. Launched on 28 September 2015, AstroSat hosts five instruments capable of observing from ultraviolet to soft and hard X-ray wavelengths.

Designed, assembled and tested at IIA’s Hosakote campus, UVIT began science operations on 30 November 2015. To commemorate the milestone and discuss future ultraviolet missions, IIA organised a one-day academic workshop on 4 December 2025. IIA Director Annapurni Subramaniam noted that UVIT is the only operational far-ultraviolet telescope apart from the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling observations otherwise impossible from the ground.

UVIT comprises two telescopes observing in near-ultraviolet, visual and far-ultraviolet bands, offering a large field of view and spatial resolution better than 1.5 arcseconds—surpassing NASA’s GALEX mission. Its development involved a national consortium led by IIA, with contributions from IUCAA, TIFR, several ISRO centres and support from the Canadian Space Agency.

Speakers highlighted UVIT’s scientific contributions, including discoveries of compact companions to Be stars, extended UV disks in dwarf galaxies, novae in Andromeda, young star formation patterns, and emission from distant galaxies at redshift 1.42. Over the decade, UVIT has observed 1,451 targets, contributing to around 300 research papers and 19 PhD theses.

IIA also outlined plans for the next-generation ultraviolet mission INSIST (Indian Spectroscopic and Imaging Space Telescope), building on decades of expertise gained through UVIT.

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