A two-day hands-on workshop was organized by Kohima Science college, Jotsoma (KSCJ) on “basic astronomy and telescope making for school students” at Kohima September 26 and 27.
Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune provided support and resource persons for various training sessions.
The workshop saw participation from nine schools and colleges from Manipur and Nagaland.
Altogether, 60 students participated in the workshop. The workshop was coordinated by Dr.C. Kachhara and Veta Nyienu, assistant professor, department of physics, KSCJ.
The resource persons included Dr. Gazi Ameen, associate professor and Dr. Rupjyoti Gogoi, assistant professor from department of physics, Tezpur university and Samir Dhurde and Tushar Purohit, science educator from IUCAA, Pune.
The inaugural session was graced by director higher education C. Khalong Ao as chief guest.
The objective of the first day programme was to familiarize students and teachers to the fascinating subject of Astronomy, while the second day was spent by them in making of actual telescopes and learning how to observe with them.
Meanwhile, special session was also conducted to learn how to identify and observe the motions of the objects of the sky and how they would look through a telescope.
A total of 10 telescopes were made, each costing only Rs 3000. The students not only finished them in a day, but also were able to take observations of faraway objects. Some students also observed interesting objects like planet Mars and the Andromeda Galaxy at night, through their telescopes. With Mars regularly being in the news, this was a wonderful and exciting sight for the youngsters.
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