About ATSOA

Our current understanding of the Universe depend not only on continuous growth of observation facilities, but also on the number of peoples utilizing them. Recently there has been seen serge in upcoming observatory not only national wise but also in the international scenario, such as upcoming ARIES Devsthal 3.6m telescope and internationally existing European very large 8.6m telescope (VLT) and American Keck 10m telescope. Similarly s the case in high energy range (X- and gamma-ray) which have been made possible by satellites such as XMM-Newton, Chandra, INTEGRAL, RXTE, Swift, and Suzaku, while just commissioned new missions, like the Fermi Gamma-Ray Observatory, promise new discoveries. The same is true for radio astronomy with many discoveries from the existing world-leading radio-astronomical observatories such the ATCA, the VLA, the VLBA, the EVN, and MERLIN, with a range of major planned upgrades to these facilities, plus additional facilities planned and under construction.

Clearly, given these developments, the need for more researchers to exploit the enormous volume of available and upcoming scientific data, both by analyzing these data and interpreting them, is pressing. In this context, we announce annual ARIES training school in Observational Astronomy (ATSOA) to provide young Indian universities/College MSc Final year or Fresh Ph.D studenrts the necessary expertise/skill to independently conduct data-analysis relating to observational astrophysics especially in Optical domain.

The 2^nd ATSOA will be held from 27^th February - 6^th March 2011 at ARIES, Manora Peak Nainital. The focus will be on hand on experience on observational Astronomy using 1m-ARIES telescope. The topics covered at the school included telescopes, Star Formation and evolution, circumstellar matter radiative Processes, and techniques of photometry, spectroscopy, as well as Galactic and Extra-galactic Astronomy. The first half of day will consist of talks by ARIES scientist, and second half will be given to hands-on/demo sessions on image processing and spectral analysis. During the school ample time will also be for discussions and practice as well to interact closely with ARIES Ph.D research students, which are playing major role in organising this ARIES annual activity.

The audience targeted by the school is primarily to help young MSc final year or fresh Ph.D University students inclined to work in observational Astronomy. We welcome applications from candidates pursuing PhD/MSc at various Institutes and Universities all-over India, interested in Astronomy, Astrophysics and related opics. All selected participant are eligible for free hospitality and travel suport by sleeper class in case they are unable to get travel suport from their parent institute/university.