Akashmitra group at Persistent

 Most of us are born with an innate fascination for the sky and space beyond it. It must be a rare person – an unfortunate one, to be frank – who has never looked up at a star-studded sky at night and marveled at the wonders of cosmos.

At Persistent Systems, Nagpur, Akashmitra is a group of astronomy enthusiasts, founded by my friend and colleague, Mihir Mishra. The objective of our group is to organize events related to astronomy, astrophysics and related fields and bring about some awareness about these subjects within the organization.

The inaugural event of Akashmitra was held in May 2012. The guests for the event were Rtd AVM Ulhas Deshpande, Arun Dolke, and Praveen Jatt, the hobbyist astronomers who own a Nagpur-based amateur astronomy group called Kutuhal.

 

The event started off with a welcome of the guests by Shekhar Patankar, followed by a presentation by the guests about the history and applications of telescopes in astronomical studies.   We then mounted the 5” Newtonian telescope and the 18x65 mm power binoculars on the roof top for night sky viewing. We could see the Venus setting and the close up view of the Moon, but the sight of Saturn, with its beautiful rings, was the highlight of the evening.

 

The next event, held in August 2012, started with a quiz and a tongue-in-cheek satirical skit of the TV coverage of scientific events. It was followed by the main agenda of the evening: a talk by noted astrophysicist from Nagpur, Dr Sanjay Wagh. Dr. Wagh talked about why the study of cosmos is so important, the large scale structure of the universe and the possibility of alternate theories about the origin of universe, apart from the currently in-vogue Big Bang Theory. The talk was followed by wide ranging questions from the audience, right from quarks to quasars.

 

Both the events received a very positive response from the crowd, in fact, much more than we had originally anticipated. This is an indication that no matter in which profession we are in, some of us still strive to maintain the cosmic connection with the stellar objects we wondered about during our childhood.