My experiences at Astronomy Workshop Shaastra 2004 were strange. I was working under good old Loki, who inspired me quite a lot to participate in Literary activities. I got to know 2 amazing people - Ganesh and Aswin. Work was tedious with a lot of posters to make, 10 hours a day on computer, searching images and putting them on posters, making the template and what not. It was fun with Loki preparing for GRE right beside me. Then there was the putting up of IPs, xeroxing of the star maps - which could have been assigned to volunteers for IP and production (my thanks to all the other vols). The system is quite organized with work very well distributed. But sometimes things were very bad because of lack of manpower. Then when the event came, came the registration thing. 2 of us had to sit at the Hospitality giving the registrants star maps which were their tickets to the event. Along with that there was a problem with the title of a lecture in the schedule, which had to be changed by hand in hundreds of these sheets. The lectures arranged were excellent. Then it was food coupons being spent in the evening for dinner and off we go to terrace to set up the telescopes and stuff.
I should say, the one thing that spoiled all was that the skies were very cruel to us. Clouds everywhere making even the brightest of stars almost inivisible. Till around 30 deg altitude the sky was a shady red soil colour. Thanks to TIDEL park, there was a lot of background lighting. To add to all the trouble there was uncontrollable crowd trouble. We had to show them TIDEL park for showing them how to use a telescope... Well, all said and done, it was an experience never to forget.
Sem2 : Shaastra coord interviews in March. I don't know why I went for it. Still can't figure out why I took a lot of responsibility when I'm seriously bad at handling this. Anyways, I got selected and work began soon for Shaastra 2005. This time we had a lot of stuff done on the web including a pre- registration. That was supposed to make it all the more better(?). IPs and all software material was made well in advance. We got some videos to show the participants so as to keep them entertained if the sky were to be like 2004. I learned a lot from 2004. My extra thanks to the coordinators Loki, Debo and Devilal. The next issue was getting telescopes and lectures. Thanks be to my co-coord Prasad aka Rapdas, a lecture was arranged. Disappointingly we couldn't make that as good as 2004, but one professor who couldn't come that time came for a lecture this time for World Year of Physics and that got us lucky. I had to make a string of visits and calls to get telescopes from Birla planetarium. But in the end we got some very impressive stuff from them. But to get this, it was quite difficult as things were going wrong in the last minute. Lack of understanding among coords was taking its toll. We finally got that done too. Furthermore there was a problem of arranging a place to store these. Only a small enclosure was available and that did suffice.
Coming to the event days, the professor who was to deliver the lecture arrived on day1. A very nice person, who has a lot of u.s accent because of ~20 yrs there. Things beginning to work. But... Rapdas was writing GRE on exactly that day. Man was Murphy right! To add to the trouble there was a seriously killer problem. The event which was to begin at 11 was put in as 9 in the schedules. What bigger problem do you need. There was another registration problem, people expected the same as 2004. So we had to reintroduce that. People throng the terrace at 9, we are just getting started. What a shock it was for us! And then because of people thronging the hospitality desk, the hospitality head is totally pissed off(obviously). He comes atop and says - Astronomy Workshop Pack! and all Hindi abuses. I was beginning to count stars - pun again! It was a long quarrel with the core group that settled it. It was 4 mad men shouting at each other(incl me!). It was an effort to get it right. The telescopes arrived on time. We set all the equipment up including a computer and LCD projector (which initially was not sanctioned for us - so we had to put an effort there too). The vols were given the work of handling the scopes/binoculars during the session and 1 guy for the registration thing.
t = 11 pm, 06 Oct 2005. We have people coming in. Everyone up and going.
THE SKY IS CLEAR - GOOD HEAVENS! And so we started and it went very well. Participants were amazed at the software demonstrations we gave them. Many thanka to the vols, observations also went well. Ganesh and I were shouting the basic instructions, like
"There's 3 stars there, you can't see the 3rd" , "The big triangle right above your head" , "The blurred patch is a cluster" and what not...
Photo shows a vol and myself pointing at Cassiopeia
Aswin unfortunately couldn't be there for the event. We missed him a lot. Telescopes incl the huge Celestron reflector were excellent and people enjoyed working with them. The summer triangle was very dominant in the Western horizon. And of course we had Mars and Orion nebula, Andromeda galaxy and too many binary/double stars to show them.
Day2 and 3 went like it were pre-programmed. And the timing problem was almost clarified by huge IPs showing the timings. It was one heck of an October.
Photo shows almost the whole group of Astronomy Workshop 2005.
Me 3rd from left.
I should say, the one thing that spoiled all was that the skies were very cruel to us. Clouds everywhere making even the brightest of stars almost inivisible. Till around 30 deg altitude the sky was a shady red soil colour. Thanks to TIDEL park, there was a lot of background lighting. To add to all the trouble there was uncontrollable crowd trouble. We had to show them TIDEL park for showing them how to use a telescope... Well, all said and done, it was an experience never to forget.
Sem2 : Shaastra coord interviews in March. I don't know why I went for it. Still can't figure out why I took a lot of responsibility when I'm seriously bad at handling this. Anyways, I got selected and work began soon for Shaastra 2005. This time we had a lot of stuff done on the web including a pre- registration. That was supposed to make it all the more better(?). IPs and all software material was made well in advance. We got some videos to show the participants so as to keep them entertained if the sky were to be like 2004. I learned a lot from 2004. My extra thanks to the coordinators Loki, Debo and Devilal. The next issue was getting telescopes and lectures. Thanks be to my co-coord Prasad aka Rapdas, a lecture was arranged. Disappointingly we couldn't make that as good as 2004, but one professor who couldn't come that time came for a lecture this time for World Year of Physics and that got us lucky. I had to make a string of visits and calls to get telescopes from Birla planetarium. But in the end we got some very impressive stuff from them. But to get this, it was quite difficult as things were going wrong in the last minute. Lack of understanding among coords was taking its toll. We finally got that done too. Furthermore there was a problem of arranging a place to store these. Only a small enclosure was available and that did suffice.
Coming to the event days, the professor who was to deliver the lecture arrived on day1. A very nice person, who has a lot of u.s accent because of ~20 yrs there. Things beginning to work. But... Rapdas was writing GRE on exactly that day. Man was Murphy right! To add to the trouble there was a seriously killer problem. The event which was to begin at 11 was put in as 9 in the schedules. What bigger problem do you need. There was another registration problem, people expected the same as 2004. So we had to reintroduce that. People throng the terrace at 9, we are just getting started. What a shock it was for us! And then because of people thronging the hospitality desk, the hospitality head is totally pissed off(obviously). He comes atop and says - Astronomy Workshop Pack! and all Hindi abuses. I was beginning to count stars - pun again! It was a long quarrel with the core group that settled it. It was 4 mad men shouting at each other(incl me!). It was an effort to get it right. The telescopes arrived on time. We set all the equipment up including a computer and LCD projector (which initially was not sanctioned for us - so we had to put an effort there too). The vols were given the work of handling the scopes/binoculars during the session and 1 guy for the registration thing.
t = 11 pm, 06 Oct 2005. We have people coming in. Everyone up and going.
THE SKY IS CLEAR - GOOD HEAVENS! And so we started and it went very well. Participants were amazed at the software demonstrations we gave them. Many thanka to the vols, observations also went well. Ganesh and I were shouting the basic instructions, like
"There's 3 stars there, you can't see the 3rd" , "The big triangle right above your head" , "The blurred patch is a cluster" and what not...
Photo shows a vol and myself pointing at Cassiopeia
Aswin unfortunately couldn't be there for the event. We missed him a lot. Telescopes incl the huge Celestron reflector were excellent and people enjoyed working with them. The summer triangle was very dominant in the Western horizon. And of course we had Mars and Orion nebula, Andromeda galaxy and too many binary/double stars to show them.
Day2 and 3 went like it were pre-programmed. And the timing problem was almost clarified by huge IPs showing the timings. It was one heck of an October.
Photo shows almost the whole group of Astronomy Workshop 2005.
Me 3rd from left.
So much for the 4 continuous night outs and no more than 2 hrs of sleep per day. These days gave me a lot to write about, too much to remember. It's difficult to say whether time will wear this experience off me. Hope to keep the enthusiasm going. Cooperation kept everything going. Let me keep that in my mind, as the rig veda said:
Sam Gachhadhwam, Sam Vadadhwam, Sam Vo ManAmsi JAnatAm
Assemble, exchange ideas, know your minds together.
Sam Gachhadhwam, Sam Vadadhwam, Sam Vo ManAmsi JAnatAm
Assemble, exchange ideas, know your minds together.
