Mount Abu InfraRed Observatory

Did You Know?

• Mount Abu is about 28 km from Abu Road railway station and about 240 km from Ahmedabad.
• MIRO is operated by the Astronomy & Astrophysics Division of the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.
• Observations are closed during the Indian monsoon period from late June to mid-September.

Facilities

The observatory is equipped with a 1.2m Infrared Telescope and back-end instruments including the NICMOS Infrared Camera and Spectrograph, an Imaging Fabry-Perot Spectrometer, large format optical CCDs, an Optical Imaging Polarimeter, and a Fibre-linked Grating Spectrograph. A high-resolution optical spectrometer called PRL Advanced Radial-velocity All-sky Search (PARAS), used for detecting extrasolar planets via the radial velocity technique, began observation in April 2012. A 50 cm Automated Telescope for Variability Study (ATVS) monitors variable sources such as AGNs, variable stars, and comets, and a 43 cm telescope supports ground-based photometry. MIRO has its own aluminizing plant for polishing telescope mirrors and a liquid nitrogen plant to cool infrared detectors. A new facility created by LEOS, ISRO will house a one-meter diameter telescope with sophisticated optics and back-end instruments, known as the Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance (EODSS) system, to track space debris including inactive satellites, electronic parts, and rocket leftovers.