IIA announces summer school in Astronomy, Astrophysics

Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) will organise its annual summer programme to help students familiarise with the basics of Astronomy and Astrophysics from June 7 to 16.

The offline summer school will be organised at IIA’s Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KSO) while a separate online school is also being planned on June 27 and 28.

The offline school will have around 40 seats that are open to MSc/MTech/BTech students who will be completing their courses by June 2024 in the disciplines of Astronomy, Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering, and students in these disciplines who completed their courses in 2023.

Students interested in the offline and online programmes can apply on events.iiap.res.in. The last date to apply is May 17.

IIA faculty members, who are doing frontier research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, will be the instructors in the summer programme that will cover subjects including exoplanets, solar physics, stars and interstellar medium, galaxies and intergalactic medium, astronomical instrumentation, and General Relativity and Cosmology. IIA said the programmes – consisting of lectures, tutorials, and demonstrations – were designed to help the students build a knowledge base for research in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Students selected for the offline school will be provided free boarding/lodging (on a shared basis) at KSO. IIA which has its main campus in Koramangala in Bengaluru operates observational facilities at Kodaikanal, Kavalur, Gauribidanur, and Hanle. The summer school programme is part of the institute’s efforts to motivate students from different parts of the country to take up research.