The BINA collaboration: science at the Royal Observatory of Belgium

The Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy and Astrophysics (BINA) is a collaboration between Indian and Belgian astronomical institutes with the main aim to optimize the scientific output of the Indo-Belgian telescopes, being the 4.0-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope and the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope. These new facilities are both located at the Devasthal Observatory near Nainital, India. In this contribution, we introduce projects that are of scientific interest for colleagues of the department “Astronomy and Astrophysics” of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB). It serves as an invitation for Indian astronomers to participate. We highlight how these projects could benefit from observations with the Indo-Belgian telescopes by using instruments from the first-generation (currently offered) and/or the next-generation (development or design phase). We show that, from an ROB point-of-view, the BINA would be the most successful if the 3.6-m DOT would be equipped with an efficient optical high-resolution spectrograph.