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.
