Question

Where is the Vain Bappu observatory located?
(A) Udaipur, Rajasthan
(B) Jantar-mantar, Delhi
(C) Kavloore, Tamilnadu
(D) Patiala, Punjab

Answer 1

Hint: The Vainu Bappu Observatory of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics traces its origin back to 1786 when William Petrie acknowledged his private observatory at his garden house at Egmore, Madras, which eventually came to be mentioned because of the Madras Observatory.

Complete Answer:
- However, Kodaikanal had only a couple of nights available for observation, and hence astronomers searched for a replacement site after India's independence. M.K. Vainu Bappu who took over because the director of the Kodaikanal Observatory in 1960, found a sleepy little hamlet called Kavalur within the Javadi Hills as an appropriate site for establishing optical telescopes for observing celestial objects. This came to be mentioned as Kavalur Observatory.
- Vainu Bappu started the 2.3-meter (93-inch) aperture telescope, designed and built within the country. Bappu died in 1982 and wouldn't see the completion of the telescope. On 6 January 1986, the observatory was renamed as Vainu Bappu Observatory and thus the 2.3 - meter telescope as Vainu Bappu Telescope. The telescope is so powerful that it can easily resolve a 25 paise coin kept forty kilometers away. Deep sky observations are administered with this telescope employing a kind of focal plane instrument.
- The equatorially mounted horse-shoe-yoke structure of the telescope is perfectly suited to low latitudes and permits easy observation near the North Pole. The telescope has an F/3.25 paraboloid primary of two .3 m diameter with the prime focus image scale of 27 arcsec/mm and a Cassegrain focus image scale of 6.7 arcsec/mm. This telescope has been operated as a national facility and attracts proposals from everywhere in the country and sometimes from outside India.

Hence the correct option is C.

Note: The Vainu Bappu Observatory is an astronomical observatory owned and operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. it's located at Kavalur within the Javadi Hills, near Vaniyambadi within the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It's 200 km south-west of Chennai and 175 km south-east of Bangalore.