Context: An international team of astronomers from India, Japan, and Europe has published the results from monitoring pulsars, called nature’s best clocks, by using six of the world’s most sensitive radio telescopes, including India’s largest telescope, the Pune-based Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) provides evidence confirming the presence of nano-hertz (ultra-low frequency) gravitational waves using pulsar observations.
About GMRT
- It is a low-frequency radio telescope that helps investigate various radio astrophysical problems ranging from nearby solar systems to the edge of the observable universe.
- It is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes of 45-metre diameter, observing at metre wavelengths. It is the largest and most sensitive radio telescope array in the world at low frequencies.
- It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
- It is located near Narayangaon, Pune.
- Astronomers from all over the world regularly use this telescope to observe many different astronomical objects such as HII regions, galaxies, pulsars, supernovae, and Sun and solar winds.
- It was recently upgraded with new receivers, after which it is also known as the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT).
About Pulsar
Pulsars are a type of rapidly rotating neutron stars that are essentially embers of dead stars which are present in our galaxy. It is like a cosmic lighthouse as it emits radio beams that flashes by the Earth regularly akin to a harbour lighthouse.
