Pune's uGMRT one of six telescopes in world to contribute to research on gravitational waves

Pune, Jun 29 (PTI) An international team of astronomers from India, Japan and Europe has published results from monitoring pulsars using six of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes, including India's largest one - uGMRT, said a premier radio astronomy institute here on Thursday.

uGMRT stands for upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope located near Narayangaon in Pune district.

The results of the research provide a hint of evidence for the relentless vibrations of the fabric of the universe, caused by ultra-low frequency gravitational waves, the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA-TIFR) said in its statement.

Such waves are expected to originate from a large number of dancing monster black hole pairs, crores of times heavier than the sun, it said.

The team, consisting of members of European Pulsar Timing Array (EPTA) and Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) consortia, published their results in two papers in the 'Astronomy and Astrophysics' journal and their results hint at the presence of such gravitational waves in their data set.

Astronomers monitor these pulsars using the best radio telescopes of the world, including India's premiere radio telescope, the uGMRT, it said.

In recent years, uGMRT has made significant contributions in precisely recording the little flashes of pulsar's radio beams so that we can use pulsars as celestial clocks, the statement said.

Prof Yashwant Gupta, Centre Director at NCRA-TIFR which runs the uGMRT, said, "It is fantastic to see our unique uGMRT data being used for the ongoing international efforts on gravitational wave astronomy." "Carrying out high precision timing of pulsars for such a purpose was one of the crucial science targets of the major upgrade of the GMRT that we carried out during 2013-2019, and I am extremely pleased to see it producing fruit within the first few years," he said.

The wideband receiver systems that we designed and built for the upgraded GMRT are the ones that have enabled the high quality data from the lower radio frequencies that the GMRT is contributing to the international collaboration, he added. PTI COR SPK NP