Telescopes of India Tour

Wishing one and all a Happy New Year. In the coming year, 2009, we will be going on a tour of some of the observatories in India. The trip can, perhaps be best described as a pilgrimage to the Holy places of astronomy in the country, with a connection to the heavens! I like how that snugly fits the description. So, without much ado, here is the list of observatories I plan on visiting, subject to their approval: 1. Indian Astronomical Observatory, Hanle 2. ARIES, Nainital 3. DU Observatory 4. Mt. Abu Observatory 5. Girawali Observatory 6. GMRT, Narayangaon 7. Osmania Univ Observatory, Hyderabad 8. CREST, Bangalore 9. Ooty Observatory 10.Vainu Bappu Observatory, Kavalur 11. Kodaikanal Observatory In addition to going there physically and adding pictures and videos, I would also like to take the oppertunity to adding information related to all these observatories on various online sources - Wikimapia and Wikipedia. The entries on Wikipedia especially are deplorable. Updates on this blog

Perhaps, the second step. I have started putting all the observatories onto one single Google map. Right now, you might be able to view Hanle and Kodaikanal on the Map given below: View Larger Map You can catch the updates as they happen on the map by subscribing to the RSS feed for this map or view it in Google Earth . I think this is more fun to watch the updates than a plain old spread sheet ( RSS feed for spreadsheet ). But, it's your pick.

I just saw this in my inbox. Vikrant (from SPACE ) had in his email to me referred to Tushar Prabhu from IIAp. So, it was great to see his email in my inbox. I think this gives you some idea of what it takes to go to the world's highest observatory at Hanle - Sep-Oct is a nice time to visit when the minimum temperature would be between 0 and 5 C. Weather would be fine, though there is a small chance of light rain or snow. You will need to reach Leh and acclimatize yourself: full bed rest on the first day and minimal activity on the second. You can proceed to Hanle on the third, or better fourth day. It takes 7-8 hours (effectively full day) to travel to Hanle from Leh. We have vehicles plying once in a few days. You will thus need to make travel plans with 8-10 days available between Leh-Hanle-Leh. He's also been kind enough to offer me to make arrangements for my stay and travel between Leh and Hanle. I think this might be a great way to start - from the highest observatory i

ToIt expands as Telescopes of India tour. Anyway, I got a couple of observatories from Ajay Talwar. You can see the updated spreadsheet here . Sampuranand Telescope, ARIES, Nainital. Mt. Abu Observatory, Gurushikhar. He also told me about a telescope at DU and his own 20" Dobsonian Mobile telescope. Reference to an old British-era observatory at Thiruvananthapuram was also made. Thanks for the links Ajay! I don't know whether the telescope @ DU qualifies because I'm looking at telescopes of the observatory kind. I know there are many amateurs all over the country with beautiful telescopes but I'm not sure how I'd go to every place with a telescope. Perhaps, that's for another tour - The Amateur Telescopes of India tour?

I have been putting together a list of the Observatories in India. I have managed to find about 8 of them including one ancient. These are the ones with their own website, which make them searchable on the Internet. I believe there are many more. Want to help? This is the current list of observatories that I know of. If you know of any other observatory, please do let me know via email, or leave a comment here.

First of all, I'd like to clarify that this tour is now being backed by SEDS India . It's an organisation that I have been leading for the past 4 years now and we're under the process of registeration. Now that, that's out of the way, I have been getting quite a response to my yesterday's blog post and emails to several mailing lists that I have been on - Manoj Pai from Confederation of Indian Amateur Astronomers (CIAA) wrote in with some words of advice. I really appreciate that. I got a reply from Halit and Bijal from Space Generation Advisory Council asking for any help in communicating with IYA teams. Svetlana Shkolyarfrom the 4Frontiers Corporation wrote to me. They've developed packaged tours for visiting space centres in the US . On the page, they've also mentioned about doing something similar in India, with ISRO. They've offered to do something similar in the US. It's an exciting prospect and I will definitely give it a thought. Vikra