Aerial view of the Devasthal Observatory. The ILMT enclosure is located at bottom left of the image. To the right is the dome of the 1.3m DFOT and at the top right the dome of the 3.6m DOT.
The 4m ILMT is the first liquid mirror telescope entirely dedicated to astrophysical observations. The ILMT is located in the foothills of the Himalayas, at the Devasthal Observatory of the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), near Nainital in the northern state of Uttarakhand (India). Thanks to a collaboration between Belgium (ULiège), Canada (UBC) and India (ARIES), the ILMT continuously monitors the sky passing at zenith within a narrow band of 22.3 arcmin. in declination down to a limiting magnitude of around 22 in the Sloan g, r and i spectral bands.
The telescope was designed and built by the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) Corporation and the Centre Spatial de Liège in Belgium. The principal investigator of the project is Prof. Jean Surdej (Liège University, Belgium). Since the beginning of the ILMT project, Prof. Paul Hickson (UBC) has been acting as the project manager. The astronomer in charge at ARIES is Dr Kuntal Misra.
