National Workshop on Astronomy and Astrophysics in Kathmandu

The Central Department of Physics at Tribhuvan University has been helping bring the world of Astronomy & Astrophysics to interested Nepalese students since 2008 by offering Astrophysics as an elective course in the Master’s level. No separate department or institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics is established to date in Nepal. In spite of this, more than 250 M.Sc. (Physics) students have chosen Astrophysics as an elective paper. These students are studying in the eight different colleges all around the country. All these colleges are affiliated with Tribhuvan University. To date 74 Master’s thesis have been completed in Astrophysics.

Some of those Master’s thesis resulted in publications in high-level scientific journals.  At present, three graduates are involved in a Ph.D. and 16 are doing research work for their Master’s thesis in the department. The research areas are galaxy evolution, dust structures around PNe, White Dwarfs and Pulsars, chirality of large scale structure, modeling galaxy rotation curves and observational work (16 inch Schmidt telescope).

Keeping the aspirations of young students in mind, we have decided to organize a workshop in order to provide an extensive learning environment. We intend to provide an exposure to the virtual observatories, database, software and basic programming language which is commonly used in astrophysical research. Our aim is to familiarize students with the process of problem identification as well as problem solving procedures. The workshop is mainly for photometry and spectrometry. For this, we use the data available in the ADS/SIMBAD/NED/SkyView. We will focus on infrared and X-ray astronomy and use IRAS images and XMM Newton spectra using software AstroLinux, ALADIN and MATLAB (below for details).

Venue:  Central Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University premises at Kirtipur, Kathmandu

Date:  June 3rd -7th, 2013 

Target of the workshop

1.       Participants will be able to access database for both photometry and spectrometry.

2.       Participants will be familiar with the data and image reduction process.

3.       Participants will learn the basics of random and                 smooth particle simulation.

4.       A method of problem identification will be introduced.

5.       Participants will get opportunity to present their work in the workshop.

Registration process

1.       Participant must be physics graduate M.Sc (Astrophysics Major) students will be encouraged.

2.       Contributory participants will be encouraged.

3.       Participants should have their own laptop.

4.       Registration fee will be NRs. 5000

5.       Interested can apply through conference webpage.

This event is supported by the Ministry of  Science and Technology, the National Academy of S&T, the Nepal Physical Society and the Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Group.

Contact address

Dr. Binil Aryal
Associate professor
Central Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur.
Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel: 977-1-4331054
Email: nwaa2013cdp@gmail.com and aryalbinil@gmail.com
Website: astronepal.webs.com