AKEDUSAT and Rotary Club Manipal came together and decided to provide 7 schools across Udupi district with telescopes and develop Space Clubs in these schools enabling students to take interest in space science and astronomy; in this venture they chose to associate with PAAC for help on astronomy.
Rotary Club members invited Dr. A.P. Bhat as a resource person for the presentation program and members of PAAC were invited to join the program and help the schools learn how to set the telescopes up.
A little gift from PAAC
While the schools received these telescopes, PAAC also provided these schools with prints of our Astrographics and a PAAC planisphere, to help the schools kickstart their astronomy activities.
Students of PAAC guided the schools in setting up the telescopes and explained how to put them to good use. The telescopes provided were basic / beginner telescopes, which would make it easy for the students to learn setting it up and spotting bright objects in the night sky. This would help the schools in pursuing astronomy clubs and getting better resources for their students to learn astronomy. Dr. A. P. Bhat assured the schools that PAAC would always help and guide the schools in taking astronomy seriously as Astronomy is an important subject, missing form the syllabus in schools.
Look up! Stars!
The telescope presentation was organized into two programs, the first being at Oakwood school Kundapura on 10th January. The second one at MPUC, Manipal on 11th January. On both occasions, the telescopes were set up, the schools provided with resources and the highlight of both the programs were the sky-watch, aimed at getting students interested in the sky.
On 10th January, the program was greeted with a clear sky with many constellations visible. Dr. A.P. Bhat guided the audience in spotting and identifying the visible stars and constellations. On 11th January, the sky was not visible due to cloudy weather. So we conducted the sky-watch virtually on the LED screen, using Stellarium.
Due to the Covid Pandemic, not many students could be involved in these events. A few students were chosen from each school to learn the telescope set up.
Some of the schools also PAAC for the inauguration of their space clubs. They asked us to organize sky-watch programs, which were successfully conducted by the members of PAAC.
