Research project BL/IN/07 (Research action BL)
The 3.6-m DOT Telescop has been constructed by AMOS (Liège) with financial support from BELSPO (2,000,000 EUR). Our network that emerged from this collaboration is still expanding and currently involves colleagues from two Belgian and seven Indian institutes (see Appendix Ap1 and Ap2). The scientific exploitation of the observations of solar system, galactic and extragalactic celestial objects that will be obtained with the Indo-Belgian telescopes (3.6-m DOT and 4-m ILMT; Ap3 in Appendix) during the Belgian Guaranteed Time (see above) and beyond (with other telescopes of interest listed in Appendix Ap3) will be more successful if a shared approach with respect to the preparation of observing proposals, procedures of data acquisition as well as scientific goals is defined among the partner-institutes. When coupled to precise questions/problems in the research fields of common interest (e.g. asteroseismology, binaries, massive stars, abundance studies, galaxies, active galactic nuclei, quasars and ground-based support for spatial missions like Gaia, XMM-Newton, Integral that are supported by BELSPO), based on data obtained with a specific instrument, the needs will be addressed in the same way, and this will enhance the necessity of closer collaboration at the scientific level. Currently, a high-resolution spectrograph (PI: Jeewan Pandey) and a CCD fast photometer (PI: Santosh Joshi) are already being developed in India in collaboration with Belgian astronomers and engineers.
Network activities:
(A) Workshops (one @ARIES/India; one @ROB/Belgium) to summarise and promote scientific collaborative projects that will make use of the Indo-Belgian telescope to encourage the construction of new, dedicated instrumentation in order to make the best use of the 3.6-m DOT. Such meetings are perfect opportunities to allow face-to-face discussions during a few days between partners of already identified collaborative projects. It will strengthen them and will lead to new ones.
(B) Work visits: (B1) from Indian engineers/scientists to Belgium to enhance the efficiency in the development and commissioning of the scientific instruments for the Indo-Belgian telescopes. Belgian engineers already have a lot of experience in the development of astronomical instruments (e.g. the High Efficiency and Resolution Mercator Echelle Spectrograph; Raskin et al., 2011, A&A 526, A69).
(B2) from Belgian astronomers to India to exchange knowledge and expertise in science and technology. Visits to the Indo-Belgian telescopes by Belgian astronomers will lead to a better understanding of their instrumentation, a more efficient analysis of the astronomical data and more and better observing proposals.
Coordinator India : Santosh Joshi, Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES)
