Students peek into the vast 'Cosmos' during workshop

It’s not everyday that one gets understand Earth’s exact position in the Milky Way. For students and teachers who participated at ‘Cosmos-2013’, the display at the workshop was an eye opener.

They were thrilled at Universe’s expanse and the different type of objects that made it up. The students sat dumbstruck as the comparison of the size of earth to that of Sun was displayed on screen.

This was just a part of the session that was conducted during Cosmos 2013, a two day residential workshop on cosmological aspects and telescope making that concluded on Sunday. It was organised by the Mysore Science Foundation at CSTRI, Mysore.

Students were introduced to ‘Stellarium’, an open source software for the computer, that shows a realistic sky in 3D. The virtual sky software offers a catalogue of over 6,00,000 stars, illustrations of constellations and a realistic depiction of the Milky Way galaxy.

A video show on the transit of Venus, a phenomenon when Venus passes directly between Earth and Sun, observed once every 127 years, the landing of ‘Curiosity’ (rover) on Mars and operations and life of astronauts at the International Space Station located above Earth in Space, attempted to unravel the limit of the boundaries of Space.

Participants had to stretch their imaginations in a session called ‘Nakshatra Loka’, in which the lifecycle of stars, some of which were more than a thousand times larger than the Sun, were explained in simple terms.

They were also provided with a first hand experience on building their own telescopes to wonder at the aspects of space.

Among the participants was M Srinivas, a retired teacher. “Though I was a teacher, I had not learned about space. Such programmes have a potential to develop curiosity among young students who participated along with me here,” said Srinivas.

He said that the workshop would help him in developing Teaching Learning Models.
Maulya K B, a second year PUC student at Sadvidya Composite PU College in the city said that she would take up a course in pure sciences following the workshop.

“Just studying science using college text books is not enough. This is my first workshop on cosmological aspects and it has helped me understand how small Earth is and how large the Universe is,” she said.

Aditya M N, winner of the ‘Young Scientist Award’ given by Karnataka Rajya Vignana Parishat, and an SSLC student at Lions Sevaniketan, said that the workshop had re-kindled his enthusiasm for astrophysics. Stressing that he liked “all kinds of Physics”, he said that he was considering taking up research in the future.