The world-class, 3.4-meter optical telescope is operational and has acquired its debut images.

“We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long,” said INO Project Director Habib Khosroshahi, an astronomer at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) in Tehran, told Science.

INO project was initiated about 20 years ago, aiming at the development of a medium-class telescope to provide a research facility for national users. Thanks to its geographic location, it is expected to attract international users and visiting instruments. The site selection campaign was concluded by selecting Mt. Gargash at 3600m above sea level in central Iran, 100 km north of the city of Isfahan.

“With this amazing image quality, right at the start of the commissioning, we demonstrated that the optics, mechanics, and the control hardware and the software, an integral of tens of thousands of parts, work in tandem and will allow our astronomers to explore the universe within reach of this modern facility”, Khosroshahi added, according to INO website.

He added that this is a special moment because most of the sub-systems have been developed in-house, either at INO or by the local industry supervised by INO.

“INO is at its best right at the start of a new journey towards scientific operation”, he asserted.

The Iranian observatory could help fill a geographic gap in a global network that keys in on fleeting phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts.
Gerry Gilmore, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and chair of INO’s international advisory board, said “When they started this project, it was just a dream. No one in Iran had attempted anything on this scale before.”

Last year, some former INO personnel voiced concerns about whether changes to INO’s design might compromise its performance. “Those doubts have been put to rest,” said optical engineer Lorenzo Zago, a consultant and advisory board member.

INO opened its dome for sky calibration on 27 September and the next night imaged Arp 282, a pair of galaxies some 319 million light-years from Earth.

The image’s resolution—0.8 arc seconds—and that of a second image taken a few days ago, 0.65 arc seconds, are close to the limit set by the atmospheric conditions at INO’s site, 3600-meter Mount Gargash in central Iran. “That resolution’s spectacular. Much better than expected,” Gilmore said.

“The science run, which hopefully starts next summer, will show the quality of the design and construction,” said Reza Mansouri, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Sharif University of Technology who led the project until 2016 and who last year expressed worries about the telescope’s future.

Engineers still need to complete tasks such as integrating software, fine-tuning the active optics, and installing the first science instrument, a high-quality imaging camera.

Initial science goals include probing galaxy formation evolution and stellar evolution and hunting for exoplanets.

The Iranian observatory and two others in the region—a 4-meter infrared telescope in Turkey nearing completion and a 3.6-meter optical telescope in India—fill a geographic gap in a global network that keys in on fleeting phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts to try to pinpoint their locations and unravel their physics. “You need a chain of telescopes all around the world to follow up,” Gilmore said.

In building INO, astronomers in Iran had to surmount hurdles that few colleagues elsewhere face: sanctions that curtail high-tech imports, and visa restrictions limiting their travel abroad. The Iranian team purchased the glass mirror blanks from a German firm. INO engineers then had to figure out how to construct nearly everything else on their own. “What surprises me is that the know-how came so fast,” Zago said. “They’ve been working like hell!”

“At every stage, they increased the project’s ambition and complexity,” Gilmore said. For example, he said, when so-called active control systems—sensors, actuators, and software that position a primary mirror—first became available for larger telescopes about a decade ago, INO engineers incorporated those into the design.

What’s “truly astonishing,” Zago said, is a precision vacuum chamber that INO engineers and an Iranian company fashioned to coat the blanks with aluminum, transforming the polished glass into telescope mirrors.

When the United Kingdom in the 2000s set out to build an aluminizing system for its Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, Gilmore said, “it took us forever to get right.”

Khosroshahi hopes to forge partnerships with international teams that might install state-of-the-art instrumentation in INO’s four instrument slots. “The door is open from our side,” he said, though sanctions and politics could stymie some potential collaborations.

In the meantime, Iran’s burgeoning astronomy community—just a couple of dozen strong at the project’s outset but several hundred scientists and students today, Khosroshahi said—is looking forward to some serious stargazing.

“We fought with disappointment, darkness, and also with words that could discourage us,” said IPM’s Maryam Torki. “But in the end, we witnessed this glorious birth.”

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But that is about as far as the similarities go. That’s the conclusion reached by British and Dutch astronomers from their research with ultra-sensitive radio telescopes in a well-studied region of the universe. They publish their findings in two articles in the international journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Astronomers have studied active galaxies since the 1950s. Active galaxies have a super-massive black hole at their center that is swallowing matter. During these active phases, the objects often emit extremely strong radio, infrared, ultraviolet and X-ray radiation.

In two new publications, an international team of astronomers focused on all the active galaxies in the well-studied GOODS-North region in the constellation of Ursa Major. Until now, that region had been studied mainly by space telescopes collecting visible light, infrared light and UV light. The new observations add data from sensitive networks of radio telescopes, including the UK’s e-MERLIN national facility and the European VLBI Network (EVN).

Thanks to this systematic study, three things became clear. Firstly, it turns out that the nuclei of many different types of galaxies can be active in different ways. Some are extremely greedy, gobbling up as much material as they can; others digest their food more slowly, and others are nearly starving.

Secondly, occasionally, an accretion phase occurs simultaneous with a star-formation phase and sometimes not. If star formation is ongoing, activity in the nucleus is difficult to detect.

Thirdly, the nuclear accretion process may or may not generate radio jets—regardless of the speed at which the black hole swallows its food.

According to principal investigator Jack Radcliffe (formerly University of Groningen and ASTRON in the Netherlands and University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, now University of Pretoria, South Africa), the observations also show that radio telescopes are optimally useful to study the eating habits of black holes in the distant universe. “That’s good news, because the SKA radio telescopes are coming, and they will allow us to look deeper into the universe with even more detail.”

Co-author Peter Barthel (University of Groningen, the Netherlands) adds: “We are getting more and more indications that all galaxies have enormously massive black holes in their centers. Of course, these must have grown to their current mass. It seems that, thanks to our observations, we now have these growth processes in view and are slowly but surely starting to understand them.”

Co-author Michael Garrett (University of Manchester, United Kingdom) adds: “These beautiful results demonstrate the unique capacities of radio astronomy. Telescopes such as the VLA, e-MERLIN and the EVN are transforming our view of how galaxies evolve in the early universe.”

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Iran is a country of immense beauty, charm, and ancient-world mystery. From the Caspian Sea in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south, Iran is filled with numerous tourist attractions–mostly untouched.

Among many attractions, astronomy tourism, a type of tour which can flow a big sum of money to the sector’s pockets, has garnered a lot of attention lately.

Iran – a land covered with wide deserts in the eastern and central parts, where the melody of the wind is the only sound that reaches the visitor’s ears – offers some of the most pristine star-gazing conditions in the world.

To make the pest of such opportunities, travel agencies have been trying to organize tours on this ancient fascination to allow interested individuals to witness the beauty of the night sky it all its glory, far away from cities’ light pollution.

Worth to mention, the deserts of Dasht-e Kavir and Dasht-e Lut provide clear skies for astronomy enthusiasts, making them some of the greatest places on the planet to witness the Heavens, and learn about the mythology of the stars, find constellations in the sky, listen to their stories in an interactive experience.

There are many other ancient sites in the country used to be the centers for mathematical astronomy. It should come as a little surprise that such places have now become top travel destinations for the aficionados.

Mathematical astronomy was used to build multistory ziggurat towers, such as Chogha Zanbil in Susa (in present-day Khuzestan province), dating back to the Elamite Era. Ziggurats functioned as observatories; at seven-floors high, ziggurats were used by astronomers to observe and record the movement of celestial bodies. Tables with astronomical computations of the distances between stars have been preserved and contain information on the basic fixed stars and constellations, their relative positions, and periods of the solar rising and settings, among others.

Ka’ba-ye Zartosht in Naqsh-e Rostam (located in present-day Shiraz), which was built during the Achaemenid Era, bears surprisingly detailed inscriptions of the cycle of days.

In the following centuries, more advanced structures called Chahar Taghi (meaning ‘four arches’ in Farsi) were used by astronomers to create calendars and almanacs. The most famous of such structures are the Niasar Chahar Taghi, Isfahan Province and the Radakan Chahar Taghi, Khorasan Razavi Province.

Sadly, not everyone has the time to take an astronomy tour; life has a habit of getting in the way of living; so, the stars have been brought to the city.

Gonbad-e Mina Planetarium

The Gonbad-e Mina Planetarium, located in the Abbasabad Hills area of Tehran, is designed to show the night sky in all its glory – even during the day.

The planetarium makes sure everyone gets a chance to gaze upon the starts without the nuisance of light pollution.

Featuring a full-dome 3D planetarium, Gonbad-e-Mina is said to be the largest in the Middle East. It provides astounding views of the sky reflected upon the ceiling.

There is a projector at the center of the planetarium and separate projectors for the Sun, the Moon and other planets and stars. It has been primarily built for presenting educational and entertaining shows on astronomy.

One of the most intriguing star shows at the planetarium is the projections of the night sky at various latitudes and longitudes at any moment in the past. Visitors are also treated to the position of unique constellations as seen from the northern and southern hemispheres.

The projection system, paired with the digital surround sound channels provide a surreal experience as you are taken on a journey through space.

The planetarium also houses a museum, showcasing ancient artifacts used thousands of years ago to observe and study the sky. One such artifact is the 2000-year-old Parthian Battery – discovered in the ancient city of Ctesiphon in 1936 – which is said to have been used as an electrical storage device. Another item of note is an astrolabe; a very ancient astronomical computer for solving problems relating to time and the position of the Sun and stars in the sky.

Other projects

There are a few other projects underway across the country to boost astronomical tourism capacities.

A major one is the Iran National Observatory in Kashan, Isfahan province.

The observatory is currently under construction and is slated to become operational by Autumn 2020.

Its design includes three stations with one large and two smaller telescopes, making it possible for the aficionados to enjoy looking deep into the skies.

The government is paying special attention to the tourism sector in line with the policies to diversify its revenue sources and reduce reliance on selling crude oil.

According to World Travel and Tourism Council’s annual research, the travel and tourism sector grew at 1.9% to contribute 1,158 trillion rials ($8.83 billion) or 6.5% of overall GDP and 1,334 jobs (5.4% of total employment) to the economy in 2018.

The WTTC report also shows international visitors spent 168,954 billion rials ($1.28 billion) in Iran in 2018. The council expects the number of international arrivals to stand at 6.5 million in 2019.

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