34th Annual Report (2021-22)

93 This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Urban IUCAA National Science Day competitions were organised on an online platform. But the rural competitions were conducted offline at Government Polytechnic, Awasari on the 18th of February 2022, strictly following all covid National Science Day competitions: The ninth Conference on Communicating Astronomy with the Public was organised virtually during May 24 – 27, 2021. Held over different time zones to accommodate participants fromaround the globe, the CAP 2021 Virtual Conference – 24 – 27 May 2021 talks and interactive sessions throughout the day on Youtube Followed by an enriching and interesting session called ' Ask a scientist '. The session was hosted by IUCAA scientists Surhud More and Anupreeta More who asked various questions to Jayant. V. Narlikar, MangalaNarlikar&SomakRaychaudhury. This question-answer session turned out to be everyone's favourite. People fromall over India submitted questions via IUCAA's social media channels. Live questions were also accepted and patiently answered. On this occasion, the teachers of Vidnyan Adhyapak Sangha Pune (VASP) also made and shared some videos of newly curated Science Toys and activities in Chemistry. This was a part of an ongoing project of VASP and IUCAA. Some videoswere featured in the event along with the announcement of the result of various student competitions taken in February 2022. The National Science Day 2022 continued into the evening with a wonderful and relevant Public Lecture titled - “Unfolding New Secrets of the Universe with James Webb Space Telescope” by Swara Ravindranath, (STSCI, NASA) The program concluded with an Online Public SkyWatch session. protocols. The Urban competitions were held on 21 February. Various competitions like poetry, essay, drawing and quiz were conducted. A total of 260 students from 52 different schools in Pune city and the Ambegaon taluka region enthusiastically participated in them. All the topics of these competitions were based on General Science and Astronomy which were designed and executed with the help of research students and faculty from IUCAA. They also helped in finalising the results of these competitions. The Annual Pulastya Science Festival 2021 was organised on the 8th and 9th of November 2021. This is an annual event that is organised in memory of Late Pu. La. Deshpande is one of the many famous events coordinated and conducted by IUCAA scipop for many years now. This year the festival included sessions on Science with Rangoli, firecrackers and their alternatives, Moon Lantern and Celestial Fireworks. The sessions were arranged and coordinated by the SciPOP Team: Shivani Pethe, Atharva Pathak, PULASTYA Rupesh Labade, Tushar Purohit, Swanand Athalye, Maharudra Mate, and Samir Dhurde. A compilation of all these topics was premiered in two different languages on two days, in English and Marathi on 8th and 9th November respectively. A Live Sky session was planned and planets were shown through the telescopes live over YouTube. This s e s s i o n wa s p l a n n e d a n d coordinated by Atharva Pathak, Tushar Purohit, Ankit Bhandari and Prathamesh Jaju. The overall participation was 2000+ views on YouTube. CONFERENCES conference attracted about 1,346 registrations from 87 countries. Sonal Thorve, Atharva Pathak, Shivani Pethe presented work on different projects of IUCAASciPOP. Samir Dhurde alongwith Arvind Paranjapye (Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai), and Sonal Thorve conducted a workshop on Zero ShadowDay aswell.