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National Workshop on AstroSatData Analysis The National Workshop on AstroSat Data Analysis was organized by the Department of Electronics, Goa University, in association with IUCAA, during November 20 – 22, 2019 at the Goa University. There were 40 participants. After the inauguration, Ranjeev Misra (IUCAA) gave a brief introduction about the workshop. Words of encouragement by Varun Sahni (Vice-Chancellor, Goa University), and Phil Charles (University of Southampton, UK) served as the perfect start to the workshop. On the first day, in the first session, Charles delivered a talk on X-ray sources in our Universe. Being part of the construction of major telescopes like SALT, SKA and LSST, he shared deep insights that went during the planning phase of building such institutions. In the second session, Misragave an introduction to time- varying blackholes. He started with fundamental questions on the existence of blackholes, and systematically went on to infer their existence based on specific observations of objects and events that have happened in our Universe. Post lunch, there were hands- on sessions, which were guided by Jayashree Roy, Shah Allam, Yash Bhargava, and Suman Bala (all from IUCAA). These sessions were on introduction to Linux, configuring all the systems, and the astronomical file formats. The second day s t ar t ed wi th the enthusiastic talk by Charles, in which the participants learnt simple but powerful techniques to determine masses of objects in our Universe, before getting a deeper understanding of binaries, and deriving some relations for time period and orbital separation. This was followed by a talk by Misra, in which he highlighted the challenges of doing science by giving examples of Hitomi of Japan, and AstroSat of India. All these have been achieved, and have happened after failures and lot of perseverance. In the hands-on sessions, the participants were given lessons on the commands to use the Heasoft Software, developed by NASA, and LAXPC Software of AstroSat, toworkwith the data of the LAXPC instruments on board theAstroSat. The concluding day started once again with Charles’ lecture, in which he delved more on mathematical techniques to determine the mass of black holes, X-ray binaries and neutron stars. He also explained to distinguish between high-mass and low-mass X-ray binaries as well as accreting X-ray binaries. The data of the Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT) on board the AstroSat, was extracted using the SXT Software, and proceeded to use Xselect Toolbox and DS9 Imaging Software to generate plots and images respectively of Crab Nebula as an example. After lunch, Vithal Tilvi (Directorate of Higher Education, Government of Goa, and Arizona State University, USA) shared unique science features of major telescopes of the world like the Keck and Gemini, Atri Deshamukhya, Himadri Sekhar Das, Rama Shanker, and Dibyojyoti Bhattacharjee also delivered talks, and conducted software hands-on sessions on topics relevant to the theme of the workshop. During the valedictory session, the participants expressed their satisfaction on the deliberations, and wished that they should have been provided with more hands-on training. The coordinators of the workshop were Asis Chattopadhyay (University of Calcutta), and Dibyojyoti Bhattacharjee. No. 121 - January 2020 10

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