A one-day workshop was organized at St. Philomena's College, Mysore, entitled,"Windows to our Galaxy" on January 23, 2007, under the Public Outreach Programme. The workshop was attended by 140 students of the college and was followed by a session of night-sky observation. After the formal inauguration by the Principal of the College, Father Leslie Moras, H.C.Bhatt introduced the developments in astronomy in the early part of the last century, which led to the discovery of the true length scales of our Galaxy and the distribution of stars and other stellar systems within it. This was followed by a talk by S.Chatterjee on the application of Newtonian mechanics to understand the properties of the Galaxy.
The post-lunch session focused on the observational issues related to the study of galaxies. Eswar Reddy described the imaging and spectroscopic methods in the visible range while Prajval Shastri gave an account of the observational studies in the radio wavelengths. Jayant Murthy described how new opportunities of studies in the ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths were opening up due to space based telescopes. The year 2007 marks the golden jubilee of the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik I by the Soviet Union .
All the speakers spoke on the opportunities that are available in IIA for pursuing a professional career in astronomy and how the prospective students can plan their studies to take up such a career. The night-sky observations were conducted with a 14-inch Meade Telescope , which was carried to Mysore from the CREST campus of IIA. This programme was coordinated by S.Pukalenthi and V.Gopinath.The night-sky observations started at 7.15 in the evening and went on till 1AM in the early morning of January 24. It was attended by over 200 students and staff of the college. The college provided the scientists from IIA with excellent facilities and the students evinced a great interest in the themes covered in the lectures as well as in the night-sky observations Father Moras highlighted the importance of such interactive programmes and has offered to organize bigger and extended workshops in his college.
