Abstract
The performance of the ultraviolet telescope (UVIT) on-board AstroSat is reported. The performance in orbit is also compared with estimates made from the calibrations done on the ground. The sensitivity is found to be within \(\sim \)15% of the estimates, and the spatial resolution in the NUV is found to exceed significantly the design value of \(1.8^{\prime \prime }\) and it is marginally better in the FUV. Images obtained from UVIT are presented to illustrate the details revealed by the high spatial resolution. The potential of multi-band observations in the ultraviolet with high spatial resolution is illustrated by some results.
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Acknowledgements
UVIT project is a result of collaboration between IIA, Bengaluru; IUCAA, Pune; TIFR, Mumbai; several centres of ISRO; and CSA. Indian Institutions and the Canadian Space Agency have contributed to the work presented in this paper. Several groups from ISAC (ISRO), Bengaluru and IISU (ISRO), Trivandrum have contributed to the design, fabrication and testing of the payload. The Mission Group (ISAC) and ISTRSAC (ISAC) continue to provide support in making observations with, and reception and initial processing of the data. The authors gratefully thank all the individuals involved in the various teams for providing their support to the project from the early stages of the design to launch and observations with it in the orbit.
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Tandon, S.N., Hutchings, J.B., Ghosh, S.K. et al. In-orbit Performance of UVIT and First Results. J Astrophys Astron 38, 28 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-017-9445-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12036-017-9445-x