Khagol_113_January 2018

| KHAG L | No. 113 - JANUARY 2018 | 06 IUCAA-NCRA Radio Astronomy Winter School RadioAstronomyWinter School (RAWSC) has been organized every year jointly by IUCAA and NCRA. The school is largely meant for under-graduate students in science pursuing B.Sc. (Physics/ Electronics/Astronomy) and Engineering (B.E./B.Tech.). Through lectures and hands-on radio astronomy experiments, the school exposes participants to astronomy in general and radio astronomy in particular. The school has been immensely popular, and so far nine such schools have been organized since 2008. The schools such as this are extremely important for attracting bright students to astronomy, particularly in the wake of Indian astronomical community embarking on several mega-projects such as SKAandTMT. This year. the 10th RAWSC was organized during December 18 - 26, 2017. There were 30 students from various colleges across the country participated in the school. The school was inaugurated by Somak Raychaudhury, Director, IUCAA. The main focus of the school was the hands-on experiments set up at IUCAA and NCRA Radio Physics Labs: (i) Observations of the Sun using the 4 m telescope to determine the antenna power pattern, (ii) Observations of HI 21 cm line to observe neutral hydrogen from the Galaxy (using 4 m telescope and horn antenna), (iii) Characterization of super- heterodyne receiver, and (iv) Understanding noise fundamentals through Johnson noise. For these experiments, the students were split into five groups. The school also had lectures on astronomy by Joydeep Bagchi (Active Galactic Nuclei), Manjari Bagchi (Pulsars), Sukanta Bose (Gravitational Waves), Jayaram Chengalur (Fundamentals of Radio Astronomy), Yashwant Gupta (SKA), Ruta Kale (Cluster of Galaxies), Divya Oberoi (Sun), Aseem Paranjape (Statistical Methods), Subhashis Roy (HI in the Galaxy, and Interstellar Medium), and Raghunathan Srianand (Galaxy Evolution). On the last day of the school, the students have presented results from their experiments. The presentations were organized in such a way as to allow exhaustive discussions on the methods used to carry out the observations/experiments and derive the results and errors. A quiz competition, to test the overall understanding of astronomy and astrophysics was also organized. From the feedback of the students, we believe that students thoroughly enjoyed their first exposure to “serious” observing and experimentation! The highlight of the school, of course, was the trip to the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), and a special session with Professor Govind Swarup, which was organized specially to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the school, which was coordinated byNeeraj Gupta (IUCAA) and Subhashis Roy (NCRA).