Twin 38 cm telescopes on AstroSat that photograph the sky in far-ultraviolet, near-ultraviolet and visible light. Built by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.
Hot young stars shine strongly in ultraviolet light, which the atmosphere blocks from the ground. UVIT has two identical telescopes with 380 mm mirrors. One covers far ultraviolet (130–180 nm). The other covers near ultraviolet (200–300 nm) and visible light (320–550 nm).
The telescopes use highly polished curved mirrors. They can pick out detail as fine as 1.5 arc seconds, which ISRO says is about three times sharper than GALEX, the next best ultraviolet space telescope. The Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru led its development.
UVIT detected far-ultraviolet light from AUDFs01, a galaxy about 9.3 billion light years away. A survey of the Andromeda galaxy produced a catalogue of more than 75,000 ultraviolet sources and found young stars in its central bulge. UVIT has also seen new stars forming in gas streams trailing behind "jellyfish" galaxies.