Aries Training School in Observational Astronomy (ATSOA) 2018

The 10 days of ARIES Training School in Observational Astronomy (ATSOA) were packed with many activities. Every day we used to have three or four lectures and then data analysis sessions. During these sessions, we first learned about image cleaning i.e. Bias subtraction, Flat correction etc. Different operating systems like Linux, Fedora, and software called IRAF was installed in laptops by guides of each group. At ARIES every computer already had this software so we first tried to practice the image cleaning commands on them. Meanwhile, we also visited different telescopes at ARIES and Devasthal.

Day 2 - A visit to Solar Telescope

Day 6 - A visit to Devasthal telescopes 

1. (3.6m) Devasthal Optical Telescope.
                

  

2. (130 cm) Telescope

3. Liquid Mirror Telescope

Day 7 - A visit to Nainital

Day 10 - Project presentation. The project of our group was to do photometry of star-forming region Sh2-305. Its part of the second catalog made by astronomer Stewart Sharpless that's why the name.

The image we used was taken by Himalayan Chandra Telescope's TIRSPEC instrument, the TIFR infrared spectrometer, an imager which has 1 Mega Pixel CCD.

The data from that telescope was already dark subtracted so we started the cleaning process by making master flat. Then we subtracted the sky image from the raw image and divided it by master flat which gave us the cleaned image.

I happened to click a picture of the computer screen when we were practicing the commands in IRAF.

Next task was to do processing to get the instrumental magnitude of stars. For this, we did aperture photometry using different commands in IRAF. Then to get the standard magnitude of all-stars we did calibration and astrometry which again involved many commands in IRAF. 

ARIES Training School in Observational Astronomy (ATSOA) 2018 - Day 1

Day 1

19^th March, 07:30am. 

I was ready with my bags to join the ten days school at ARIES, Nainital - ARIES Training School in Observational Astronomy (ATSOA) 2018 . Luckily it takes only an hour to reach ARIES by car. I looked out of the car window only once or twice during the journey and then I saw the ARIES check-post. Students were already there near the auditorium. I asked where to put my bags. After taking my bags downstairs in the room adjacent to the dining hall, I walked towards the Auditorium. The first lecture was by Prof. Hum Chand. After the welcome talk by ARIES director Dr. Anil Kumar Pandey he talked about celestial coordinates. Next lecture was given by Dr. Brijesh Kumar. He introduced himself as an Optical Astronomer at ARIES and told us about different concepts related to telescopes like focal ratio, plate scale, fast vs. slow telescopes etc. He also told us to read about how our eyes work because no telescope or detector is as good as our eyes. After these two lectures, we came out of the hall for a short break of tea and biscuits. 

The door to the Dining
Hall

Trees as viewed from
outside our rooms

During the tea break, we used to stand outside the auditorium and look at the beautiful site. I used to wonder while watching cars on the road that how small they appear and how small we are as compared to these hills and how small they are as compared to the size of Earth.

In the next lecture, Prof. Amitesh Omar told us about how detectors are arranged in a telescope. He talked for an hour only using the two chalkboards in the hall without any powerpoint slides. For lunch, we walked to the dining hall and after that, we had to attend one more lecture by Anjasha Mam who is the Senior Research Fellow at ARIES. I realized later that what she talked in an hour was equivalent to what we did in the data analysis sessions in the computer lab for a week! Her talk was on photometry and how the IRAF software is used to do image cleaning, processing and then photometry. After her talk, we were divided into groups of four or five students under the guidance of a Ph.D. scholar. Our guide was Rakesh Pandey sir, SRF at ARIES. I met with group members.  

I had only read that telescopes use CCD detectors and the data or image from it can be cleaned using different software including IRAF. I was unfamiliar with the commands used to process or clean the image. 

After a little conversation, all of us headed to see the 104cm Sampurnanand Telescope. It’s really awesome to watch the dome and telescope moving. The CCD used in the telescope has 1300×1340 pixels i.e. it’s a rectangular CCD and not a square one.

Auditorium

104cm Telescope with dome open

104cm Telescope with the dome closed

But the best part of the day came when I saw loads and loads of stars at night. The lights from the faraway houses were also beautiful. It was very very very cold. I can tell this because my roommates were shivering. I was not feeling very cold because I was wearing a lot of clothes plus a jacket with the hood cap and a shawl. I used to remain packed because I knew that I get cold very easily. We spent some time near the auditorium and talked about stars and constellation then we walked to the dining hall and to our rooms.