Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Statue of Aryabhata on the grounds of IUCAA, Pune. As there is no known information regarding his appearance, any image of Aryabhata originates from an artist's conception.

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.