Prof. Ashish Lele, Director, CSIR-NCL, felicitating Prof. Kembhavi
CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), Pune, celebrated the 73rd Foundation Day on 3 January 2023. On the occasion, Prof. AjitKembhavi, Professor Emeritus and Former Director, IUCAA, Pune, delivered the Foundation Day Oration on thetopic “From Galileo to the James Webb Space Telescope: The Forward March of Astronomy.” A website for the Central Analytical Facility was also launched at the hands of the chief guest.
In his speech, Prof. AjitKembhavi talked about how astronomy has moved forward from the time of Galileo Galilei (who first did his observations) in 1609 to the present time. Galileo was a great astronomer who first turned the telescope to the sky and pioneered its use for observing the night sky. He made the most magnificent discoveries. He highlighted the discovery of Jupiter’s satellites: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This discovery annoyed the people at that time due to the established theology, although Galileo continued with his findings. He discovered the spots on the sun. His most elegant discovery about the phases of the planet Venus was in the early days. Galileo was multifaceted. He made his living by giving tuition. He was a great expert on military projectiles, as big guns were invented in those days, and it was essential to see where it should point so that the shell lands where you want it to go. Galileo gave the principle of inertia which became the basis of the special theory of relativity.
Prof. Kembhavi shared that imaging, photometry, spectroscopy, polarimetry, and variability studies are the major tools of an astronomer. He said that much of astronomy is devoted to looking at how objects vary in the sky. He also informed about the astronomy facilities available in India, including GMRT, AstroSat, and forthcoming Aditya L1, TMT, LIGO-India, and SKA. He talked about different telescopes, including the Great Forty-foot Telescope developed by William Herschel. He gave a couple of examples of modern telescopes like reflecting telescope, Himalayan Chandra Telescope, Palomar, 5m Hale Telescope, Very Large Telescope (VLT) from Cerro Paranal Chile, Segmented Mirror Telescopes like the Keck Telescope and Betelgeuse Telescope, Thirty Meter Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope (launched in December 2021) and many more.
He further talked about the difficulties of making large telescopes. He said that the exoplanets we have seen so far are entirely abnormal as they are huge and close to the sun.
Earlier, in his welcome remarks, Prof. Ashish Lele, Director, CSIR-NCL, provided brief updates on the significant progress made in projects aligned with the roadmap of CSIR-NCL for the 2020-2030 decade. The roadmap was developed keeping in mind the key challenges and the new opportunities presented to Indian chemical and allied industries in view of some of the global megatrends such as climate change, sustainability, energy transition, supply chain disruption, self-reliance and the emerging deep tech innovation system, etc.
Later, NCL Research Foundation Awards (Student Merit Awards) were also distributed to the CSIR-NCL staff's wards by Prof. Kembhavi.
