Nehru Planetarium cordially invites you to a Special Astronomy Lecture by Professor Srinivas Kulkarni, McArthur Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Planetary Sciences at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. USA.The topic of the lecture is “Cosmic Explosions” The lecture will be held on Friday, 24 October 2008 at 5 p.m. at Nehru Centre’s Hall of culture, Worli, Mumbai 400018.
If you’re gonna be there, buzz me before hand so that we can meet outside.
Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on October 4, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.
Want to celebrate world space week?
1. Learn about your country’s space agency.
2. Talk about it to as many people as possible.
3. Write, paint, click or record your experiences.
For example, if you’re from INDIA, go to Wikipedia or search on the web to learn more about India’s space agency – ISRO. Talk to people about the SITE experiment, Edusat or Chandrayaan. Celebrate space!
I thought a general update on the ongoing efforts with Telescopes of India might help. I’ve moved all the content to an all-new blog. I’m still putting together a list of observatories I might want to visit. I am also thinking about a way to decide which observatories I might want to go to and which I can skip. I’m looking out for a sensible way to determine a cut-off.
On the new blog, I’ve also added the first Maps image where I have traced the IAO at Hanle and the Kodaikanal Observatory. These are searchable on Google Maps, but I thought it would be cool to have all of them on one map which can be updated and made available online easily.
I thought that moving it on its own blog will allow it to remain visible to as many people as possible. Find the blog here – http://telescopesofindiatour.blogspot.com.
Catch it there. You can get the RSS feeds for the blog here.
I have created a consolidated Google account for all matters related to Telescopes of India tour. Please send future emails to this account – telescopesofindiatour at gmail.com. I have also setup a seperate blog where the information that I collect during the tour will be stored. I will share the web address with you next week. Stay tuned.
First of all, I’d like to clarify that this tour is now being backed by SEDS India. It’s an organisation that I have been leading for the past 4 years now and we’re under the process of registeration.
Now that, that’s out of the way, I have been getting quite a response to my yesterday’s blog post and emails to several mailing lists that I have been on –
Thanks for your emails guys.I will reply to you individually as soon as I can. Also, if you’re planning to do something similar in your country, please do write in to me using the contact form.
Next year is the International Year of Astronomy. I hope to make a small contribution towards this by going on a “Telescopes of India” tour. I plan to go around the country and visit the various radio and optical observatories in the country.
What will I do there? First, learn about what they are doing there and why. Second, talk to the people behind the observatory to learn more about their work. Lastly, I want to enjoy as much as I can.
Right now, the trip is in the planning stages. The only thing that is certain right now is that I am going. As a first stage I plan to make a spreadsheet of all the Indian observatories and a map of these locations.
Want to help? If you are part of any observatory in the country, please do write to me with the details using my contact form. If you would like to send any words of caution, suggestions or advice, please do leave them in my comments. I also encourage you to do something similar in your country.
After the discovery of the Shiva Crater (on Wikipedia), I also found what seems to be a crater in Rajasthan called the Ramgarh Crater. All of these sites are really in a rough 500 km diameter around Mumbai. That’s like drawing a target with the centre of the bull’s eye on Mumbai. And Space seems to be playing that game and is coming really close to the city. Earlier, since humans did not exist at all, it was not really a matter of concern. But now, it might be.
It is with this idea that I propose to start a NEO (Near Earth Object) Study Centre in Mumbai. This is an amateur effort which means – it’s voluntary but atleast I think it is worth the effort. Studies here will have an impact off closing links with study in the United States and Europe and probably coming up with a better complete picture.
Think about the impact of a meteorite/comet today. How prepared are we for it? What kind of disaster management efforts can be made in case of an impact? What would be the effect of an impact in the Arabian Sea on Mumbai and nearby regions? These are some of the things that we plan to study at this centre.
To start things off I’m planning to make a detailed study of these three craters – Lonar, Shiva and Ramgarh. The preliminary ground for these studies will be this blog. We can then probably shift it to a blog of its own once we have enough resources planned for the NEO Study Centre.
If you’re interested in joining in, leave your comment and I shall get back to you. You can be based in Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat or Rajasthan to be a part of this Study Centre.
I just discovered that I live quite close to a crater which can be termed as a KT extinction crater. Translated in lay speak as a mass extinction crater. It’s not everyday that you discover you live close to a crater that possibly was cause of the extinction of life (of any sort) all across the globe. Or maybe I didn’t understand the implications possibly.
Discovered in Wikipedia. The Shiva Crater.
(Written on 16/3/08 – still stands correct)
It may probably be Engineering Student’s Fever (ESF – last minute rush to complete assignments, projects etc after lounging around till then) but I waited till the 15th to get myself registered for Wikimania 2008 at Alexandira, Egypt. No amount of waiting got me that confirmation email which would have enabled me to register SEDSWiki for Wikimania. Maybe we could do it next year with a more developed wiki? Who knows?
For practise runs of the more important conferences, try talking at the local BarCamps, that keep happening in many of the cities around the world. The sidebar on the BarCamp page has a list of the latest happening BarCamps all across the world. If you don’t know what a BarCamp is, you should probably wake up and read this.