Spring 2019
Prof. Varun Bhalerao
Author: Piyush Jirwankar
Pre-requisite courses: None
Pre-requisite skills: Knowledge of image processing can prove useful, although not essential.
Course Content: Please refer to portal.iitb.ac.in/asc/Courses
Motivation to take up the course: I wanted to explore the area of astronomy and astrophysics, for which this course was the perfect introductory course.
Information about Projects/Assignments: We had a project that was insanely cool. We were to form teams and devise projects for ourselves. The aim of this project was to put into application what all theory we had learned. This was done by using observations made from the GROWTH India telescope located in Ladakh. We were to submit a formal proposal to request the use of this telescope with appropriate justification. Then we were to tell the location of the celestial body that we were supposed to observe to the TA (an asteroid in my case) and the TA would then remotely control the telescope and make it point at that body. We were to analyse the obtained data and make conclusions. This project gave a brilliant insight into what astrophysicists do and how deeply involved it really is
Quizzes/Midsem/Endsem papers Difficulty: 4/5
Overall Course Difficulty: Difficult
Average Time Commitment: (Apart from lectures and tutorials) Between 3-6 hrs
Attendance Policy: None
General funda: Attend lectures. There is no other way to study for this course. There are no standard set of references that the prof followed. He used multiple references to teach different things, so it becomes very difficult to follow the references. Attending classes and reading the material provided by the prof is good enough to sail through the course fairly easily.
Grading stats:
| AA | 2 |
| AB | 2 |
| BB | 4 |
| BC | 5 |
| CC | 0 |
| CD | 1 |
| DD | 1 |
| FR | 0 |
Professor’s Teaching Style: The teaching style of the professor is amazing! He devotes his heart into teaching this. Since his area of research is astrophysics, he is extremely good at it and it shows through the delivery of lectures and the standard of question papers.
Should you do this course?: Those who wish to see what all goes into astrophysics are highly recommended to take up this course. This course, along with Prof. Bhalerao as the instructor, will give much insight into both, the theoretical and hands-on aspect of astrophysics