Akashmitra

Akashmitra

I am sorry to inform you that for some time now this group is not as active as it should.  The reason is mainly because most of its young active members have gone out of Pune for their higher education or are more occupied with their job.

All these wonderful people are expert amateur astronomers.

For the time being I request you to visit some other sites I maintain.

Also if you have some specific request please feel free to email me at  paranjpye.arvind@gmail.com  I will copy your request to the appropriate person.

As for myself – presently I am the director of the Nehru Planetarium, Mumbai, India and my interest lies in popularising astronomy.

— Arvind Paranpye

Welcome to Akashmitra

Akashmitra is a group of amateur astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts based in Pune. The group is open for all enthusiasts in this field and was created with the idea of astronomy popularization and recreation. We meet every week for either a lecture on some topic in Astronomy or any astronomical observation or even public sky shows and events. The lectures are given by both members as well as scientists from institutions like IUCAA or NCRA in Pune. We are extremely happy to say that for the past 10 years we have continuously conducted regular weekly activities in Akashmitra and many of our members are now actually pursuing a professional career in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Although the purpose of this group has been for astronomy recreation, our members especially students have and continue to do many astronomical projects ranging from photoelectric and digital photometry of variable stars, lunar and asteroid occultation timings, spectroscopy, amateur telescope making and even radio astronomy. Even though many members are not only capable of doing astronomical photometry but also have done reliable observations and work in the past and present times, we don’t claim that we are a research group. This is because we respect the efforts that are required to do professional astronomical research and as once it was said in our meetings “To be a professional astronomer, you need to first know your Physics and Mathematics well”.

We also conduct regular star parties at Pirangut for the public. Click here to get details of this location

Our meetings take place on the address below:
c/o National Institute of Ophthalmology
1187/30, Off. Ghole Road,
Near Phule Museum,
Shivajinagar, Pune 411005, INDIA

Normal meeting frequency: Every Thursday at 6:30 p.m. Though you must check the Regular meetings and details page.

Normal activity: Scheduled lectures or practical sessions. Here is the link to these planned activities

Notifications: Notifications of our scheduled activities are posted on this website regularly along with our official Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/akashmitra.pune

Please note that National Institute of Ophthalmology (NIO) has kindly allowed us to use their premises for our meetings and activities. Please do not call NIO for any Akashmitra activities – the staff there is not likely to know.

Quickest way to get information about meeting times and plan of activities is to check and join us on our open group on Facebook called as Akashmitra. Someone will reply.

Our official email id is : pune.akashmitra@gmail.com

We regularly do Astronomy popularization and also do sky gazing sessions for people from their own societies. If you want us to come to your society and do a show, you surely can contact us. Take a look at our gallery for some photos of a sky gazing show we concurrently did from 4 societies in Aundh.

Google map showing location of Akashmitra –

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