Abstract:
The future of astronomy in the coming decades will be shaped by the upcoming three extremely
large optical telescopes, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the
European Large Telescope (ELT). The USA astronomy and astrophysics 2020 decadal survey and the Canadian
long-range plan for astronomy have recently recommended these large observatories as a top priority for
ground-based astronomy for the upcoming decade. India is a 10% partner in one of these large observatories,
the TMT, which is jointly funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and Department
of Atomic Energy (DAE). Here, we highlight India’s contributions to the development of the telescope and
science instruments. The size of back-end science instruments scale with telescope aperture, hence, science
instruments for TMT will be the biggest ever built for any telescope. Designing and building them requires
broad collaboration within India, across TMT partnership and industries. India contributes >30% of the work
share towards the development of wide field optical spectrometer (WFOS). India is part of the development
of other first-light instruments, the infrared imaging spectrograph (IRIS) and multi-object diffraction-limited
high-resolution infrared spectrograph (MODHIS). Infrared guide star catalog is an important contribution from
India to these adaptive optics (AO)-assisted instruments. India leads the development of high-resolution optical
spectrograph (HROS), a major workhorse among the first decade instruments of TMT. India is also part of the
instrument development team of other first-decade instruments. Concerted efforts have been made to contribute
to some of the TMT precursor instruments that will help us to maximize the scientific productivity when TMT is
operational, especially in the area of exoplanet science and observations that require AO. India-TMT is part of
the science team for the Keck high-resolution infrared spectrograph for exoplanet characterization (HISPEC),
a precursor instrument to TMT-MODHIS. In addition, Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) is participating
in the science and development of Santa Cruz array of lenslets for exoplanet spectroscopy (SCALES) project
for Keck, which is a direct imaging spectrograph for exoplanet studies and a precursor to the TMT planetary
system imager.
