IUCAA - Khagol # 129 - Oct 2022 - English

| KHAG L | No. 129 - OCTOBER 2022 | 14 Fundamentals of Astronomy using Stellarium A short course on teaching some fundamentals of astronomy using the interactive planetarium simulation software – Stellarium, for college and university faculty members, was organized by the Teaching LearningCenter of IUCAA in August. The course was created in response to the favourable reception of Stellarium demonstrations which were part of earlier courses. For this 3-week Astronomy Centre for Educators Teaching Learning Centre and National Resource Centre mini-course, Prakash Arumugasamy and Atharva Pathak expanded the original introductory demonstrations to include four simulated observations using Stellarium. The attending faculty members learned the basics of local sky observations using pre-recorded, interactive animation- based lectures and a detailedworksheet on sky phenomena simulated on Stellarium. Once familiar with Stellarium, they learned and performed the following four expe r imen t s : Mapp i ng t he So l a r analemma; verifying Kepler's third law with observations of Venus and Mercury; determining the mass of Jupiter through observations of Jupiter'smoons; Roemer's experiment of measuring the speed of light. The time-intensive nature of the experiments meant that about 70 participants completed at least one, whereas 9 participants submitted reports for all the experiments. The 40-odd participants who attended all the presentations and discussion sessions gave positive feedback and said that they have benefitted fromthis short course. Colloquium 15.09.2022 ShaunHotchkiss onExperiments insharingresearch Seminars 14.07.2022 NamrataRoy onStar formationsuppressionandfeedback innearbypassivegalaxies. 11.08.2022 Prashant Pathak onDirect Imagingofexoplanets inthemid-infraredregime. 23.08.2022 Chirag Falor onAnalyticallysolvingQuadruple ImageConfigurations; startingfromcirclesandgoingbeyond. 25.08.2022 Priyanka Singh onMulti-wavelengthanalysisofCircum-GalacticMedium. 08.09.2022 AbhishekMajhi onRefinementof thefirstaxiomofgeometryandanon-singular theoryofgravity. 22.09.2022 Deovrat Prasad onCool CoreCycles-Cold-modeAGNfeedback inGalaxies, GroupsandClusters.