IUCAA

[Vijay]

The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is
an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission
to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in astronomy and
astrophysics in Indian universities. IUCAA is located in the
University of Pune campus next to the National Centre for Radio
Astrophysics, which operates the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope.
IUCAA has a spectacular campus designed by the renowned Indian
architect, Charles Correa.


IUCAA aims at being a centre for excellence within the university
sector for teaching, research and development in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. The institute was headed for its first decade by
astrophysicist Prof. Jayant Narlikar, then by Prof. Naresh Dadhich,
and now by Prof. Ajit Kembhavi, (since September 2009).

Research at IUCAA spans a wide range of fields from classical and
quantum gravity to instrumentation. IUCAA also maintains Girawali
Observatory which is about 80km Pune city, off Pune-Nasik Road and
near the historical Junnar town. In addition to catering to the needs
of astronomers in general, this observatory is unique in setting aside
a certain amount of time specifically for training as well as
observational proposals arising from Indian Universities. The
telescope has a primary mirror of diameter 2 meter, f/3 and a
secondary of 60 cm, f/10. IUCAA Faint Object Spectrograph & Camera
(IFOSC) is the main instrument available on the telescope's direct
Cassegrain port currently. This instrument was designed along the very
successful FOSC model which was developed at the Copenhagen University
Observatory for the ESO and Nordic Telescopes. IFOSC employs an EEV
2Kx2K, thinned, back-illuminated CCD with 13.5μm pixels. The spatial
sampling scale at the detector is 44μm per arcsecond giving a field of
view of about 10.5 arcminutes on the side. In addition to U,B,V,R,I
imaging and photometric capabilities, IFOSC offers a range of grisms
with resolutions ranging from 190 to 3700 covering the wavelength
region of 350-850nm. Long slit, slitless, multislit and Echelle (with
cross-disperser) modes are available offering a wide range of
observational possibilites.

IFOSC's capabilities are further enhanced with imaging polarimetric as
well as spectropolarimetric modes with a reduced field of view of
about 2 arcminute radius.

IUCAA recently celebrated its 20 years with reunion/alumni meeting.