One of the potential alternate sites for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), proposed for the Indian town of Hanle, has less advantageous characteristics than other places Indian Minister of State for Science & Technology Y. S. Chowdary said before parliament.
“Hanle site has lower seeing values of 0.9-1.2 arc sec as compared to the alternate sites in Chile and Canary Islands of Spain (La Palma) which have seeing values of 0.55 arc sec.
Indian participation in the TMT project is being jointly funded and overseen by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). TMT was originally set to be installed at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the US. The construction work for TMT at Mauna Kea was started but had to be stalled due to revocation of a permit by orders of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
