Mount Abu

PRL, under India’s Department of Space, study the data from these missions to understand bodies within and beyond our solar system.

Location: at Guru Shikhar peak in Rajasthan

The facility’s newest 2.5-metre primary mirror telescope, the largest of the five, boasts a state-of-the-art, made-in-India spectrograph called PARAS-2 (PRL Advanced Radial velocity Abu Sky Search).

$ (PARAS-2) has a sensitivity of 50 cm per second. We are only one of five telescopes in the world with such a precise spectrograph - Abhijeet Chakraborty, head of astronomy, PRL

the 2.5m telescope, built jointly by PRL and Belgium’s Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) during the Covid-19 pandemic under Make In India

This instrument, which analyses light from celestial bodies, happens to be the most precise and highest resolution spectrograph in Asia.

Within a year since it became operational in 2023, the team was able to zoom in on the planet.

“Using our older telescope, our astronomers have already discovered three exoplanets. Now with PARAS-2, which is its elder brother, we have discovered yet another one. We also use these to study the solar system and its various features, and also comets, novae and supernovae, blazars, and other phenomena,” said Anil Bhardwaj, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), which runs the Mount Abu Infrared Observatory.

the first confirmation of an exoplanet by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1992.

Around the same time, telescopes like Hubble, launched into space in 1990, revealed countless galaxies, each teeming with stars — nearly all with their own planets.

The objective now is to find a planet similar to Earth, and eventually one that can harbour life. And India has joined the hunt.

February 2025

Extremely Large Telescope (ELT)

The $1.51 billion project by the European southern observatory, is under construction in Chile's Atacama desert.
It will be the world's largest optical infrared telescope after completion in 2028.
With a 39.3 meter primary mirror, it will study early galaxies, stars and exoplanet atmospheres potentially transforming our understanding of the universe and the search for extra terrestrial life.