Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, MANDI KAMAND CAMPUS, MANDI HIMACHAL PRADESH-175005 SPACE TECHNOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY CELL Annual Report 2019-2020 Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ Faculty Advisor Dr. Arnav Bhavsar School of Computing and Electrical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Mandi Kamand, Mandi (Himachal Pradesh) - 175005 Co-ordinators Abhijeet Manhas B18043 8628963924 Shreya Lanjewar B17142 9834340089 Yash Bansod B18095 9816789676 Important Links Website: stac.iitmandi.co.in ​ ​ Facebook: facebook.com/stacIITMandi/ ​ Github: github.com/STAC-IITMandi ​ YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCnmH6Nadt91VEkoeN_lK-rA ​ ​ Instagram: instagram.com/stac_iitmandi/ ​ ​ Twitter: twitter.com/stac_iitmandi ​ ​ Slack: stac-iitmandi.slack.com/ ​ Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ Activities Organized Sr. no Event Date 1 Jupiter Opposition 10 June 2019 2 Night Sky Observation 20 August 2019 3 Introduction to Open Source: Git and Github 24 August 2019 4 Guest Lecture by Dr. Hum Chand 31 August 2019 Live screening of ISRO chandrayaan 2 5 landing attempt 7 September 2019 6 Ruminating the God: Group Discussion 13 September 2019 Zenith: talk on Special Relativity By Bhavya 7 Bhatt 15 Sep 2019 8 Zenith: Pandora's Box Astroquiz 15 Sep 2019 9 Zenith: Astro Hack Week 15th to 30th September Zenith: Talk on Life Cycle of Stars Abhijeet 10 Manhas and Naman Tayal 17 Sep 2019 Zenith: How do we look at the Universe ? 11 Without a telescope! by Shreyas Bapat 20 September 2019 12 Zenith : Aurora - Paper Presentation 21 September 2019 Zenith Closing and Gravity (STAC 13 Room)Inauguration 5 October 2019 14 Orionid Meteor Shower 21 October 2019 15 Looking through the Lens 31 October 2019 16 Utkarsh : Curiosity 3 November 2019 17 Utkarsh : What's Up 5 November 2019 Discussion on String Theory by Shikha 18 Suman 6 November 2019 Black Holes and Telescopes by Jainen Tandel 19 and Devansh Kochar 7 November 2019 20 Winter Projects Winter Vacations Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ 21 Introduction to AstraX’20 18&20 February 2020 22 Solar System and Beyond 27 February 2020 23 Sky Watchers Telescope Training session 10-12 March 2020 Introductory Remote Telescope 24 Astrophotography 21 March - 1 April 2020 25 Quasar Desk AstroQuiz 8 April 2020 26 Kamand Premier League (KPL) - Astrothon 8 April 2020 Jupiter Opposition We organized a telescope observational session on the night of 10th June 2019 as it was the day when Jupiter can be viewed most clearly from earth. The session was held at OAT(South Campus) and with our 6” telescope, we were able to see Jupiter and it’s four big moons distinctively. Around 20 students were present there to attend the event and we told them about what is opposition, arms of the Milky WayGalaxy and facts about the moons of Jupiter. Venue: OAT ​ Date: 10th June ​ Time: 11:00 PM ​ Night Sky Observation An informal observation event was organised in front of Gravity (STAC Room) as the sky was very clear. There was a huge participation from the First year students. We set up the 6” telescope and observed various objects like the Moon, Saturn etc through the telescope. The students were told about different Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ constellations that could be seen in the sky, even the Milky Way was visible. Approximately 25-30 students were present. Venue: SAC Terrace ​ Date: 20th August 2019 ​ Time: 10:00 PM ​ Introduction to Open Source: Git and Github This session was conducted on 24 August. Students were told to bring their laptops(if they had one). Our club members, Shreyas Bapat and Akshat Malviya took a session. There were more than 40 students. Students were told various basic commands related to github. The main objective of the session was to introduce a tool related to open source and project management. Venue: A10-1D ​ Date: 24 August,2019 ​ Time: 7 pm ​ Talk by Dr. Hum Chand About the speaker: Dr. Hum Chand is a Scientist in ​ Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences(ARIES) , Nainital. His areas of research includes Quasar absorption lines; Variation of fundamental constants using QSOs absorption line; Central Engine and Environments of different types of Active Galactic Nuclei. He talked about the 3.6 m telescope and synchronisation of the dome. The main topic that he talked about was the active galactic nucleus. This was followed by an informal group discussion after the talk. The talk was attended by around 60-70 students. Venue: Auditorium Hall-A ​ Date: 31st August, 2019 ​ Time: 4 PM ​ Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ Live Screening of ISRO Chandrayaan 2 Landing attempt Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Lander (Vikram) was supposed to land on the South pole of the moon. We had all gathered to experience the event through its live telecast. Many enthusiastic students gathered together to witness the event. Venue: A13 - 1A ​ Date: 7 September 2019 ​ Time: 10 PM ​ Ruminating the God: Group Discussion This was the first Group Discussion of this session. This successful event was mentored by Shivam Choudhary, one of our Fourth Year members. Two groups were divided such that one was in favour of the topic and one against. Almost 20-30 students participated. The discussion ranged from different theories emerging from participants’ imagination. Venue: ‘Gravity’(STAC Room) SAC Building ​ ​ Date: 13 September ​ Time: 8:30 PM ​ ZENITH 2019 Zenith is an annual intra-college fest that includes many exciting activities like different talks, competition and a week long exciting Hackathon. Zenith: Talk on Special Relativity This session was taken by Bhavya Bhatt, Core Team Member of STAC took a session on Special Relativity. Many students showed interest in the talk. Session started with the basics of physics and then he explained about Space-Time diagrams, geometry and different paradoxes like grandfather paradox Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ and twin-paradox. He also gave a flavor of gravitational wave distortion in space. The students were very curious and interacted by asking some good questions. Venue: A10 -1D ​ Date: 15th September ​ ​ Zenith: Pandora’s Box Pandora’s Box was an Astro-Quiz. This event was coordinated by Anam Siddiqui and Shrinivas Khatavkar. The quiz saw huge participation of students; around 70 students were present at the venue to attend the quiz. The quiz was designed keeping in mind that many of the participants are beginners, questions related to planets of our solar system, some about relativity and few were based on the physics of black holes, stars etc. Winners of Pandora’s Box: Winner - Prajwal Sood 1st Runner Up - Tushar Rao 2nd Runner Up - Shishir Asthana With Special Mention of Yatharth Mogra and Nilaksh Pundir Venue: A10-1D and A13 1A ​ Date: 15 September, 2019 ​ Time: 6 PM ​ Zenith: Life Cycle of Stars This talk was presented by Abhijeet Manhas and Naman Tayal, in which they talked about the life of stars; how they are born, what are the necessary conditions required for the formation of stars, how a star is different from planets, etc. We also explained the H-R diagram which is used to categorize different types of stars based on their temperature and luminosity. This was followed by discussion about the death of Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ stars, supernovae, formation of neutron stars and black holes. Around 30 students gathered at the venue to attend the talk which ended after answering doubts and questions asked by them. Venue: A10-1D ​ Date: 17 September, 2019 ​ Time: 7 PM ​ Zenith: How do we look at the Universe? Without Telescope This talk was presented by Shreyas Bapat in which he discussed logistics of space exploration; why do we need large funds for Space technologies and how they changed our daily lives. He also talked about the Gravitational waves and how LIGO detected waves arising due to the merger of two black holes. He explained the concept on which LIGO works, enabling it to detect disturbances close to ten thousandth part of the diameter of a proton. Venue: A13-3A ​ Date: 20 September, 2019 ​ Time: 10 PM ​ Zenith: Aurora Aurora was a paper presentation event. This event was coordinated by Arshita Kalra and Shikha Suman. In this event participants were supposed to present any scientific paper or topic of their choice in front of judges. This was followed by questions by the judges and audience. Students prepared their presentations very well and the event observed 6 entries. They presented very interesting topics like death of the universe, life on black hole, origin of fundamental forces,etc. Winner: Devansh Kochar (B19249) Runner-up: Aniruddha Prakash (B19206) With special mentions of Naman Tayal and Janhavi Shedge Special thanks to Akshita Jain and Bhavya Bhatt for judging the event. Venue: A10-1D ​ Date: 21 September, 2019 ​ Time: 2 PM ​ Annual report | STAC | SNTC | IIT Mandi ​ Zenith: Astro-Hack-week Astro-hack week was a hackathon with Astronomy as the theme. The event was coordinated by Abhijeet Manhas and Yash Bansod. The stage 1 was idea submission in which 8 teams showed up. The teams came up with many interesting and different ideas. After the idea, each of the team was mentored by event coordinators for making design and choosing tech stack for the product. Three teams submitted the final product, 2 from 2nd year and 1 from first year. Winning team: hfte_ke_coders DIPANSHU VERMA , ARSHITA KALRA , SIDDARTH MITTAL , NISHITA This team created a simulation of gravity on different masses using pygame. Runner-up team: Phoenix JANHAVI SHEDGE , TANISHA GAUTAM , RIDHI RATAN , BHAVNA KOSTA This team from first year worked on simulating the life cycle of stars using vpython and glowscript. With special mention of TeamX (SHUBHAM PANDEY, VASU GUPTA, SAKSHAM BARARA). They worked on computer vision to predict the distance of light source based on it’s penumbra and umbra image.