30th Annual Report 2017-18

165 PublicTalks Joydeep Bagchi and team have given talks on their recent discovery, Saraswati Supercluster, in Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT, Pune), and IUCAA, Pune. Awards 1. New discovery award: Joydeep Bagchi and his team of scientists and students were awarded the NEWDISCOVERYAWARD at ASI for the discovery of Saraswati Supercluster. 2. Best poster award 2018: ExtragalacticAstronomy: PratikDabhade for the poster “Giant RadioGalaxies fromLOFARTwoMetre Sky Survey” 3. Best poster award 2017: Instrumentation: Ashish Mhaske for the poster “Horn Antenna and Software Defined Radio for Detecting 21 cm Hydrogen Line” . M.Sc. Practicals M.Sc. students are supposed to perform experiments as a part of curriculum. The students have to appear for practical exam to complete their course. Some of these experiments are conducted in Radio Physics Lab. Every year 3 to 4 experiments are performed by the students under RPL. These have been a great success and will continue to be so under our the guidance. Some of the experiments are antenna radiation patternmeasurement, detection of 21 cmhydrogen line, Faraday rotation and noise fundamentals. RadioAstronomyWinter School RadioAstronomyWinter School (RAWS) has been organized every year, jointly by IUCAAand NCRA. The school is largely meant for undergraduate students in science, pursuing B.Sc. (Physics / Electronics /Astronomy), and Engineering (B.E./ B.Tech.). Bright and highly motivated high school/junior college students involved in amateur Astronomy, have been also encouraged to apply. Through lectures and hands-on Radio Astronomy experiments, the school exposes the participants to Astronomy in general, and Radio Astronomy in particular. The school has been immensely popular, and so far seven such schools have been organized since 2008. The experiments are conducted by Radio Physics Lab (RPL). The hands-on experiments included (1) Observations of Sun with the 4 m telescope to determine the antenna power pattern, (2) Observations of HI 21 cm line to neutral hydrogen from the Galaxy, and (3) Measuring power patterns of various types of antennas using the antenna trainer kit. These experiments are designed to educate the students about techniques and instrumentation used in radio astronomy