Scientists at RRI continue decade long quest for searching first Cosmic light via SARAS 3

• Decade long search of Scientists at the Raman Research Institute (RRI) is continued with the radio telescope SARAS
• It aims to catch the trace of an extremely elusive sign from space that of the birth of the first stars or what’s called “the cosmic dawn”

Efforts to detect Cosmic light

• The RRI started efforts in this direction in 2010 using the Shaped Antenna Measurement of the Background Radio Spectrum (SARAS)
• The EDGES telescope, or the Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature (EDGES) that was placed in an Australian desert, recorded an unusual signal
• It was claimed to be the sign of the cosmic dawn.
• However the signal’s pattern wasn’t shaped in the way cosmological models predicted
• The RRI group later made an updated version of SARAS, called SARAS-3.
• The claim of EDGES telescope team was refuted by Researchers from Raman Research Institute by utilising SARAS 3 radio telescope

Places chosen for the observation

• The radio telescopes are placed in remote regions like deserts in Australia to an island in the Antarctic ocean
• As these regions are devoid of radio signals used by billions of cellphones
• The radio signals can disturb the signals coming from space related to Cosmic light

SARAS 3 radio telescope

• It is a niche high-risk high-gain experimental effort of Raman Research Institute(RRI)
• It is the first telescope worldwide to reach the required sensitivity.
• It is the first attempt to design, build and deploy in India a precision radio telescope to detect extremely faint radio wave signals from the depths of time, from “Cosmic Dawn” when the first stars and galaxies formed in the early Universe.
• Its chief distinguishing characteristic is that, unlike other radio telescopes, it can be deployed on water bodies.