Bhubaneswar, April 14: Samanta Chandra Sekhar Amateur Astronomers’ Association (SCAAA) organised the 26th Annual day of the association at the Institute of Physics here. The association was established July 10, 1993 with the aim to popularise science – particularly Astronomy. “We regularly observe the solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, transit of Mercury and Venus and various rare celestial events,” said Subbhendu Pattnaik, secretary of SCAAA and deputy director of Pathani Samanta Planetarium.
President of SCAAA, L Satpathy said that Astronomy is a vast subject and it has lot of potential which need to be tapped. The new generation must be encouraged to pursue this. For this we regularly visit different schools and colleges of the state and organise night sky-watching programme. Last year we organised around 40 such programmes across the state.”
On the occasion students of different schools who participated in quiz, painting and creative writing competition organised by SCAAA, were given awards.
Subhendu Patnaik said that the Pathani Samanta planetarium has plans to develop the planetarium further and four more are in the offing in four other places of the state.
They are working on a mini space observatory which will soon come up to enhance the experience of visitors. The mini-space observatory would replace the existing telescope.
This apart, the planetarium had signed two MoUs with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) to set up an information centre in Bhubaneswar.
Recently, the first ever image of Black Hole was captured. The planetarium will soon have special programmes on the Black Hole soon.
