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The Hindu
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Mysuru Science Theatre Festival from July 24
The eighth edition of Mysore Science Theatre Festival will be held in Mysuru from July 24 to 27. The festival will be held at Sri Ramagovinda Rangamandira in Ramakrishna Nagar, and it will start daily at 5 p.m. onwards. It is organised by The Mysore Science Theatre Festival Trust in association with the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, and Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement, Mysuru. Annapurni Subramaniam, astrophysicist and violinist, will inaugurate the event at 4.30 p.m. with a violin recital. Neelanjan Choudhary, English playwright and novelist from Bengaluru, will deliver the keynote address on science and science plays. The daily programmes before plays (5 p.m. to 7 p.m.) include exhibition of mathematical toys, books, and posters on Indian women scientists, besides telescope viewing of sun spots. Special sessions include Talk on How Astronomy dethroned humans on July 25, discussion on Indian Women Scientists in 2025 on July 26, and quiz on Serendipitous Science on July 27. The festival was started in 2017 by three amateur theatre troupes from Mysuru who came together to stage plays focusing on science and scientists. Initially, they staged translated English plays, now produces original Kannada plays on Indian science and scientists. The plays have been staged more than thirty times and reached prestigious institutions like CSIR-CFTRI, Indian Institute of Science, Institute for Human Genetics, and several engineering colleges. The organisers are Parivartana Ranga Samaja, Arivu Ranga, and Kalasuruchi, with support from Kutuhali-Kannada (Kannada science magazine) and Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement, Mysuru. The Indian Institute of Astrophysics has sponsored the festival, said a note.
Hans India
19-07-2025
- Science
- Hans India
Cosmic Twist: City-based astronomers discover a new kind of stellar chemistry
Bengaluru: While India was focused on the International Space Station and a Gaganyaatri code-named Shux, researchers from Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have quietly uncovered a cosmic twist. That, in the far away Ophiuchus Constellation, a peculiar star named A980, some 25,800 light years away, is rewriting what we know about stellar chemistry. Gajendra Pandey, Senior Professor at IIA, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), said, it all began when his PhD student, Ajay Saini proposed to study 27 newly identified hydrogen-deficient carbon stars in high resolution spectrum for his thesis work. According to Pandey, a hydrogen-deficient carbon star is a peculiar breed of cool star that lacks hydrogen -- the most common element in the universe. 'Until 2022, only five stars were known to be hydrogen deficient. But in 2022, 27 stars, including A980, were identified. The problem is, it was done in a low-resolution spectrum. So, we decided to look at them in high resolution as well as study their chemical composition,' said Pandey to PTI. A closer look by Saini and Pandey, using the Hanle Echelle Spectrograph on the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in Ladakh, showed something strange. A980's spectrum -- essentially a stellar fingerprint -- did not match what they expected. Instead, this mysterious star that belongs to a rare class called Extreme Helium (EHe) stars, carries a surprisingly high amount of germanium -- a metallic element never before observed in this type of star. EHe stars, said Pandey, are almost entirely made of helium, and they are likely formed when two white dwarf stars --one carbon-oxygen rich and the other helium-rich --merged in a spectacular cosmic collision.' According to Pandey, they were surprised to see singly-ionized germanium (Ge II) lines in the A980's optical spectrum. 'These are the first-ever detections of germanium lines in an EHe's observed spectrum,' explained Pandey. More surprises awaited the duo. They found that germanium is eight times more abundant in A980 than in the Sun, which is evidence for the synthesis of germanium in EHe stars. 'Germanium has never been detected in these stars before, and here it was -- eight times more abundant than in the Sun,' said Saini. The discovery is important, as every new clue helps astronomers' piece together the cosmic story of how matter came to be, added the researcher duo. The detection of germanium, for instance, means that there are other plausible scenarios than the long-held theory that EHe stars originated from the merger of a carbon-oxygen white dwarf with a less massive helium white dwarf, said Pandey. Pandey and Saini suspect that A980's unusual chemistry could trace back to a phase in stellar evolution called the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) -- a stage when stars puff up and start producing heavy elements like barium, strontium, and germanium. These stars eventually shed their outer layers, and their cores become white dwarfs. And then there are Thorne-Zytkow Objects (TZO) -- theoretical hybrid stars that have a neutron star at their core. 'They are also known to produce lots of germanium, using a different method called the rp-process (rapid proton capture). While A980 does not fully match the expected properties of a TZO, the similarities are intriguing,' added Pandey. The discovery, said Pandey, pushes the boundaries of what we thought we knew about stellar chemistry. 'It also shows how powerful high-resolution spectroscopy can be used in uncovering the hidden stories written in starlight,' he added.
The Hindu
18-07-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
IIA team decodes reason behind May 2024 solar eruptions
Bengaluru Astronomers at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) have decoded the reasons behind the series of powerful solar eruptions or Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) that resulted in rare northern lights dancing across the Ladakh's night skies in May 2024. These findings offer a major step forward in the improvement of space weather forecasting models, particularly in predicting the impact of complex CME events on Earth's magnetosphere. CMEs are massive ejections of magnetised plasma from the Sun's corona. When such solar blasts are directed toward the Earth, they can cause geomagnetic storms capable of disrupting satellite operations, communication systems, and power grids. According to the Department of Science and Technology, the great geomagnetic storm that started on 10 May, 2024, was linked to a rare sequence of six different CMEs erupting in succession, and it was associated with both solar flares and filament eruptions from an interacting complex active region on the Sun. Until now, gaining a complete understanding of how CMEs evolve thermodynamically as they travel from the Sun to Earth has remained challenging, primarily due to limited observations near the Sun as well as in near-Earth space. To bridge this gap, a team of solar astrophysicists led by Wageesh Mishra, a faculty member at IIA, used observations from the NASA and ESA space missions. They built a model to investigate the manner in which the rare chain of six interacting solar blasts reported from IIA's Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle in Ladakh interacted with each other and evolved thermally en route from the Sun to Earth. 'The study is the first of its kind, both in India and internationally, to capture the continuous thermodynamic evolution of multiple interacting CMEs across such a vast distance in the heliosphere,' said Dr. Mishra. 'Our analysis demonstrates that CME-CME interactions lead to significant thermal restructuring within. By the time they reach the Earth, the electrons in the complex ejecta were found to be in the heat-releasing state, while ions displayed a mix of heating and cooling behaviour, with the heating state being the dominant mode overall,' said Soumyaranjan Khuntia, the lead author and a doctoral scholar at IIA.
Hans India
18-07-2025
- Science
- Hans India
IIA releases images, video of third interstellar visitor
Bengaluru: Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, on Thursday released a video and a montage of time-lapse images of the recently spotted comet C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), also known as 3I/ATLAS, for educational and outreach purposes. The comet was first discovered on July 1 by the ATLAS telescope in Chile. 'This is only the third interstellar object to visit our solar system, which is exciting. Telescopes around the world will be studying this comet before it exits the Sun's gravitational pull to learn more about its structure and chemistry,' said Niruj Mohan Ramanujam, Head of IIA's Science, Communication, Public Outreach and Education (SCOPE) section. IIA researchers, he added, observed the comet on the night of July 3 using the Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) at the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, Ladakh—a high-altitude astronomy station operated by IIA.
The Hindu
17-07-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Himalayan Chandra Telescope captures comet ATLAS
The Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle in Ladakh of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) had recently captured the comet C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), which is only the third interstellar visitor to the solar system so far. The comet , also known as 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted by the ATLAS telescope in Chile, moving rapidly at a relative speed of 61 kilometre per second on July 1. The IIA said that this object has captured the attention of astronomers across the world and in order to promote interest and awareness on this celestial visitor among the students and general public in India, the Indian Astronomical Observatory at Hanle observed the comet using the Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) on the night of July 3. 'Our webpage ( now has a video as well as montages of timelapse images of the comet using this data, along with additional details, for education and outreach purposes,' the IIA said on Thursday. The comet was discovered by international telescopes, the IIA said.
