36th ASI meet kick-starts at OU

Hyderabad: The four-day 36th Astronomical Society of India (ASI) meeting commenced at Osmania University here on Monday and about 400 astronomers from across the country will be taking part to deliberate the recent scientific findings during the session.  According to ASI, six parallel workshops had been organised on Monday mainly for college and PhD students participating from different educational institutions. 

Giving details of the workshop, Prof Brijesh Kumar said one workshop was organised on the latest results from using the 3.6 metre-sized optical telescope in Devasthal in Uttarakhand. The telescope is run by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences. It is the largest telescope in India and was recently declared open to astronomers. The main objective of the workshop was to acquaint the students and astronomers with the capabilities of the telescope, and how to use it, he added. 

Another workshop was organised on Deep Learning in Astronomy. “Deep Learning or Machine Learning is used extensively in pattern and image recognition and even to beat world champions in certain games like 'Go'”, Prof Ashish Mahabal said.

The workshop was to expose the students to such machine learning techniques that can be used in astronomy. The students were able to learn how to use automated algorithms to classify galaxies and stars, look for strange patterns in telescope data etc. 

There will be more than 100 scientific talks and 170 posters presented at this meeting, from scientists based in universities as well as research institutes. Some of these talks will be on their latest discoveries. 

Some of them will be on results from many new Indian observatories like AstroSat, which is a satellite in space, and the upgraded GMRT, a radio telescope near Pune. The ASI sessions are being hosted by Osmania University as a part of their Centenary Year. The meeting was also to honour the setting up of ASI at the University in 1972.

Prof Vainu Bappu, the famous astronomer from Hyderabad, was the President of the society, Prof U R Rao, who later became the Chairperson of ISRO, was the Vice-President, and Prof Abhyankar from Osmania University was the Secretary. Since then, the ASI had expanded and now has more than 1000 members, from senior astronomers to college students.

During the session, Justice Oak award for the year 2016 will be awarded to Dr Pallavi Bhat and Dr Tanmoy Chattopadhyay. Dr Pallavi Bhat did her PhD from IUCAA, Pune under the supervision of Prof Kandaswamy Subramanian and is presently working at Plasma Science and Fusion Centre, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Dr Tanmoy Chattopadhyay did his PhD from Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmadabad under the supervision of Dr Santosh Vadawale and is presently working at Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania.