Building the Ooty Radio Telescope

Swarup immediately began work on the design and construction of a solar array to be located at Kalyan, near Mumbai.

For this he used a set of 32 small dishes, sent by the Pott’s Hill Observatory in Australia.

Within months the new Kalyan Solar array was ready and began to make observations.

In August 1963, Bhabha extensively grilled Swarup about his plans and found that Swarup had already worked out all the details.

When Swarup asked him if he should prepare a project report Bhabha told him “Young man, do not waste your time writing a project report. Your main problem would be to collect a team; when you have managed that you can write a project report and proceed with its design and construction”.

With these encouraging words, work began on a war footing to design and build what would become the largest radio telescope in the world.

The first challenge was to find a suitable site for the new telescope. In early 1965, after an extensive site survey by Swarup and his student Ramesh Sinha, a site was found on a hill near Ooty in present day Tamil Nadu.

The site was located at an altitude of about 2100 m in the Nilgiri Hills. In late 1965, Homi Bhabha approved the construction of the ORT. A few days later, Bhabha tragically died in an air crash in Switzerland.

The construction started in 1966 and was initiated by the new TIFR Director Prof. MGK Menon

The construction of the telescope proceeded rapidly. A parallel service road was constructed besides the telescope.

A laboratory building was constructed right next to the telescope.

Adequate arrangement for water drainage were ensured.
By early 1970, the new telescope was ready.

The challenges in construction were numerous and formidable. A complex engineering feat on this scale had never been attempted in India and Swarup’s group had to work closely with Indian industry to implement their design.

The Ooty telescope consists of a 530 m long and 30 m wide parabolic cylinder located on a north-south hill slope whose slope equals the latitude of the location.

The reflecting surface of the telescope is made of 1100 thin (0.38 mm diameter) stainless-steel wires running parallel to each other for the entire length of the cylinder.

These are supported on 24 steerable parabolic frames and total weight of the moving structure is 262 metric tonnes

By 1971, Swarup had built up a team of nearly twenty astronomers and a similar number of engineers who shared his passion for building world class instruments and to use them to do cutting edge research.

He set up the Radio Astronomy Centre right next to the giant telescope that he had built. Through the 1970s the group worked in Ooty and made many new discoveries with the Ooty Radio Telescope.

He set up the Radio Astronomy Centre right next to the giant telescope that he had built.

Through the 1970s the group worked in Ooty and made many new discoveries with the Ooty Radio Telescope.

By 1975, Swarup's team had demonstrated that the lunar occultation technique works.

With their measurements, they were able to show that the Big Bang model for the formation of the Universe was more likely to be correct than the Steady State Model.

The ORT put India on the radio astronomy map of the world and became one of the global radio astronomy centres.

By the 1980s they were ready for an even bigger challenge - to build The Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope.

Even after almost 50 years of continuous operation, the ORT remains the world’s longest steerable telescope. It is now nearing the completion of a massive upgrade that will allow it see a much larger swath of sky at one time with significantly improved sensitivity.