PUNE: Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) will tie up with Chile, a southern American country which is home to the world’s best and clear skies, for academic and instrumentation exchange.
A high-level scientific community visited IUCAA from December 3 to 5 to take forward the talk regarding the tie-up. While interacting with the media on Thursday, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics Director Somak Raychaudhury said, “The purpose of this meeting is possible collaborations on all fronts in astronomy. We are meeting for the second time now. India has bilateral collaborations with many countries on science and technology along with Chile and some of these collaborations have been generously funded and academics can be exchanged with the country like students, research and faculty.”
President of Astronomical Society of India Anupama GC said, “We will set up a small working group of scientists from ASI and the counterparts in Chile to identify the thrust areas within astronomy and our collaboration.”
Professor at IUCAA Ranjan Gupta said, “The committee set-up where we will work out the expression of subjects of interest, scientific collaboration is one part, exchange of students and researchers, possibility of instrumentation, industry talks and third thing would be outreach where common experience will be shared.”
“Indo-Chile agreement is in place. There is huge promise in the expansion of these activities. Chile has more than half of telescopes not only optical telescopes but also digital and radio telescopes. India’s presence in global astronomy is expanding rapidly,” said Somak.
“We also discussed ways of working together not only in astronomy research but also astronomy-related activities like data sciences or astronomical engineering,” he added. Ambassador of Chile to India Juan Angulo said, “We are in collaborations with India in many ways in commercial and astronomical projects. But this particular mutual collaboration as we called it ‘win-win’, situation. ”
“We are engaging with the industry to build facilities as big projects will need huge participation from the engineering sector,” said Somak.
