Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT):
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Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) is an array of thirty fully steerable parabolic radio telescopes.
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It is located in Narayangaon, near Pune in India.
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It is an indigenous project.It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
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It functions at the meter wavelength part of the radio spectrum because man-made radio interference is considerably lower in this part of the spectrum in India and there are many outstanding astrophysics problems which are best studied at metre wavelengths.
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Detecting the 21 cm signal from the most distant galaxies in the universe was the main science goal of the GMRT.
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The location for GMRT, Pune meets several important criteria such as low man-made radio noise, availability of good communication, vicinity of industrial, educational and other infrastructure and, a geographical latitude sufficiently north of the geomagnetic equator in order to have a reasonably quiet ionosphere and yet be able to observe a good part of the southern sky as well.
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Why in news? The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) has been selected as a ‘Milestone’ facility by the U.S.-based Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).