[1] The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) felt the need of an optical telescope for observation, research, training and for the University community.

Therefore, a proposal was made to set up a medium-sized optical telescope, preferably close to the IUCAA campus in Pune.

It is located close to Girawali Village and is on top of a small hill that is part of a Reserved Forest.

The spatial sampling scale at the detector is 44μm per arcsecond giving a field of view of about 10.5 arcminutes on the side.

Long slit, slitless, multislit and Echelle (with cross-disperser) modes are available offering a wide range of observational possibilities.

IFOSC's capabilities are further enhanced with imaging polarimetric as well as spectropolarimetric modes with a reduced field of view of about 2 arcminute radius.

A set of Ultra-violet, Blue, Violet, Red, Infrared filters identical to those used in IFOSC is available for this instrument.