{"id":1037,"date":"2022-12-01T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=1037"},"modified":"2025-06-20T07:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T07:18:09","slug":"my-time-at-iia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=1037","title":{"rendered":"My Time at IIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Eswar Reddy<\/mark><\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Often, people ask me how I entered this field. Let me admit. I chose astronomy as a career, not by design but partly accidentally and partly due to necessity. After our final year M.Sc at Venkateswara University, Tirupati, in 1990, my friends and I stayed back at our hostels for a couple more weeks. During that period, one of our batch mates informed us that there was an advertisement in the library hall about the PhD programme in astronomy at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA). Importantly, we noticed that IIA provided travel allowance (TA) and accommodation for the written test and interviews. We jumped at the opportunity and filled up the applications. There were six of us, and we thought it was an opportunity not to be missed – not for getting into the programme but to tour Bangalore!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were accommodated at a rooftop hotel near Check Post (opposite Forum mall). Close to a hundred people wrote the exam. The next day, they put up a notice board announcing the results. I was surprised to find that I was one of the 10 candidates shortlisted for the interview. I stayed back. I can\u2019t say I did a great job. Still, I did impress some of the committee members with my various constants, such as the Avogadro number, and plugged it into the equations without help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post interview, I was on my way to Hyderabad, to prepare for the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exams, with a stopover at Tirupati to collect some of my belongings from the hostel. At that point, I had absolutely no idea of getting into research. Then, I saw a letter from IIA addressed to me. It said that I was selected for the PhD programme with a monthly stipend of Rs 1800 and a hostel facility. I was in a great dilemma: should I go for the PhD or go ahead with preparing for the UPSC examination?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I talked to a few of my Physics teachers. One of them, Prof. Jayaram Reddy, head of the thin film section, said without any hesitation that I should go to IIA. He also said that astronomy and astrophysics are emerging areas for research, and to prove his point he cited Dr. Subramaniam Chandrasekhar\u2019s recent Nobel Prize for his work in stellar astrophysics. He also said that preparing for the UPSC exams does not guarantee that one gets selected. Furthermore, even if one is selected, the nature of the work does not suit everyone. On the other hand, in PhD, one could pursue their research interests and contribute to the field. I was convinced by that sound advice. Of course, back in the 1990s, Rs 1800 per month was a lot of money. Almost like a job in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was a bit raw in every sense, having come from a rural background and with all my education being in small towns. Some people at IIA asked how I was going to do research with that poor English, while some encouragingly said that it was just a matter of a few months before I got hold of the situation. To me, IIA still looked like an elite place and I was unsure I could fit in. With that self-doubt, I talked to Prof. Periah, one of the senior faculties at IIA, who also came from Andhra Pradesh. I expressed all my doubts about myself, including my 3-year age gap (I had joined 1st standard at the age of 8 years) and whether I could be successful. He told me not to worry and that I had 5-6 years to prove myself. Most importantly, he told me that I\u2019d enjoy it. That is precisely what happened to me.Of the four selected from the national exam at IIA, only two of us joined – myself and Mahadevan from Kerala. He, too, left for M.Tech after a couple of months. A few months later, IIA took students from the Joint Astronomy Programme (JAP) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). From that pool came Annapurni Subramaniam (Current Director of IIA), Dipankar Banerjee (current Director of ARIES – Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital), and Uma Gorti (currently a research scientist at the University of California). Later, R. D. Prabhu joined as a JAP student (he moved on to IBM later), and Sujan Sengupta (currently a senior professor at IIA) joined as a CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) fellow. We had three seniors: Ranganatha Rao, who came through a project on atmospheric sciences (he went on to become a professor at Mysore University), G. C. Anupama (former Dean at IIA and former President of ASI – the Astronomical Society of India) and Diwakar Mayya (currently a faculty at the Institute of Astronomy, Mexico).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 1: A 1991 picture at the IISc Campus; with our mentor Prof. Arnab Rai Choudhuri at the end of his course on Radiative Transfer. From right to left: Nimisha Kantharia, Annapurni Subramaniam, Uma Gorti, Sujan Sen Gupta, Sumit Banerjee (unfortunate he passed away untimely, a bright and jovial fellow), Dipankar Banerjee, myself (Eswar), Ramachandran. Arnab is at the extreme left<\/em>.<\/mark>

<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

All of us except Uma were given accommodation at the campus behind the current India TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) office. Each room was allotted to two people, and the rooms were big enough. That was the first time that IIA had so many students on campus at the same time. We were almost treated like faculty members. They generously provided us with transport to Bangalore University, IISc or RRI (Raman Research Institute) for our coursework or to attend scientific talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the best things about that time was cooking dinner at the pantry (currently the room is used as the resource room for the auditorium, opposite the auditorium). Of course, most of the time, the menu used to be noodles or egg-based recipes. Those used to be long dinners spent discussing either world affairs or talking seriously about data reductions, quality of data, etc. Our unofficial mentor was Diwakar Mayya, an expert in observational astronomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, all good times must still come to an end. Most of us got married just after our coursework. Night-out dinners and walking in the middle of the Koramangla roads ended abruptly. I joined Prof. Parthasarathy for my PhD in the Study of Post-Asymptotic Giant Branch (post-AGB) stars which are highly evolved low and intermediate mass stars <\/strong>in the transient phase between AGB and planetary nebulae. Studying post-AGB stars was a hot topic then: to understand the evolution of planetary morphology and also nucleosynthesis in their AGB progenitors. Working with Dr. Parthasarathy was one of the most wonderful things that happened to me. He was a thorough gentleman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first observation was with the 2.3-m Vainu Bappu Telescope (VBT), then India’s and Asia\u2019s largest as well. Staying there all night with the assistants was a fantastic experience. Other observers at other telescopes at Vainu Bappu Observatory (VBO) and myself were monitoring the skies for humanity – that was the kind of feeling we had. However, that euphoria did not last long. Most nights, the skies were not clear; and even if they were clear, Mr Selvakumar, then observing assistant, told us that it was time to close the dome because of high humidity, which is not good for Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs). Sometimes it was frustrating waiting endlessly for the clouds to go out. However, there was always one thing to look forward to – the morning breakfast at the VBO canteen. Though tired and sleepy after long hours of observations\/waiting for clear skies, most of us never wanted to miss that early morning breakfast of fresh and crispy dosa and chutney or hot pongal and vada. Breakfast at VBO was unique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us (including me) doing observational astronomy used to stay weeks or even months at a stretch at VBO to get data and also to reduce and analyse the results. We used to have a well-equipped computer room at VBT with VAX computer machines. My brush with data reductions was to learn \u201cRESPECT\u201d, a spectral reduction package (pre-IRAF era) developed in-house by Prof. T. P. Prabhu and his students G. C. Anupama and Mayya. The best part of staying at VBO those days was meeting and discussing with the faculty members of other institutions who used to come for observations with the 2.3-m VBT and other facilities. Most of the breakfast conversations used to be about the previous night’s observation: humidity and seeing values at various facilities at VBO and issues we faced with CCDs or electronics or problems with the dome not functioning well. Of course, local and national politics too entered the chat now and then. Now, when looking back to those days, VBO was a great hub for learning and socialising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During observations, if there was any problem, the first person to be called was Mr. Gabriel (from the mechanical division). Once the problem was identified, we used to call either Mr. Ravi (for electronics-related queries) or someone with related expertise. These were all wonderful people with an extraordinary commitment to the facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 2: Around 1994, different teams were formed to scout potential sites for establishing the Indian Astronomical Observatory around the Himalayan region. This picture was taken when our team (in-charge of Hanle) was returning from Leh to Delhi via Manali after a month-long search.<\/mark><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Coming back to my PhD work, I was involved in identifying potential post-AGB stars using Infrared (IR) data. I used the fluxes from the IRAS (InfraRed Astronomical Satellite) catalogue to identify potential transition objects and then looked for their optical counterparts <\/strong>for observations with VBO facilities. We used the star’s coordinates to identify the area on optical Palomar Sky Surveys. Then, the identified regions were photographed and developed in a dark room. We used the pattern in the IRAS star maps and the potential post-AGB star’s coordinates to determine the visible counterparts of IRAS sources. We then prepared our observing chart with these coordinates. Some were bright while some were very faint and in crowded regions. So it was a lot of work at the telescope end to identify the right candidate. Getting the right one at the telescope was another story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my daily activities, other than worrying about data qualities and strengths of spectral lines, was playing table tennis above the IIA canteen or at VBO. I learned it at IIA from Diwakar, and it became a hobby. Playing with Dipankar was always competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I left for the USA in 1997 after obtaining my provisional PhD from Bangalore University. I continued my post-AGB work during my two-year stint with Dr. Hrivnak at Valparaiso University, and got opportunities to go to Kitt Peak National Observatory, Arizona and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Chile. Following this, it was at the University of Texas, Austin, during my four years with Prof. David Lambert, that I expanded my research areas, thanks to the observing facilities at McDonald Observatory, Texas. It was one of the best places for stellar astronomy, particularly for work involving stellar spectra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was one of the avid observers using the 2.7-m Harlan Smith Telescope at McDonald Observatory. I spent many long winter nights obtaining high-quality spectra for 400 dwarfs, two spectra for each, to understand Galactic chemical evolution. The two original papers based on these observations are some of the seminal studies in the literature in this field, with more than 600 citations for each. Winter nights are very long in northern latitudes, about 14 hours; during these times, I would enter the observatory dome at about 5 PM, fill up liquid nitrogen and open a number of mirrors to direct the light to the Coud\u00e9 focus where an Echelle spectrograph was present. When all was ready, we would open the dome and take all test spectra. I was used to coming out at about 7 AM the following day. One Mr. Daivd Doss, an all-in-one expert, used to visit us at about 10-11 PM to check if everything was alright. Apart from this, there used to be no night support during these observations. The observers were basically on their own. At the astronomy department in Austin, there used to be a regular seminar every Tuesday. Attending those seminars helped me get into newer research areas: the high Lithium (6<\/sup>Li) abundance puzzle in red giants, and the testing of host stars that had engulfed planets using 6<\/sup>Li as a tracer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I moved back to IIA in 2003 and continued my work on Li in red giants and Galactic chemical evolution. Initially, most of the new recruiters were posted at the Centre for Research and Education in Science and Technology campus (CREST, Hosakote). It didn’t take long to sink in that lack of facilities severely hinders what one would like to do. Most of the young faculty members started discussing ways to get a larger facility, since we only had 2-m class telescopes at the time in India. We used to meet weekly, and finally, we convinced Prof. Siraj Hasan, then Director of IIA, to fund for systematic search and characterization of the site around the existing Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO, Hanle).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Figure 3: Taken in October 2007, along with colleagues Drs. Parihar and Bhatt (from left) while we were scouting for potential sites around Hanle for National Large Optical and IR Telescope.<\/mark><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

This was in 2007: a small team of us Drs. Parihar, Bhatt, myself, and Mr. Angchuk scouted several potential sites and set up weather stations. On 30th October 2007, post-dinner we received an email forwarded by Prof. Hasan. The mail was sent by Prof. Lambert to Prof. Hasan about India’s participation in the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT, upcoming at Chile). The email said, \u201c\u2026 I have learned of the interest in building a large telescope at Hanle. Indeed, Reddy has been emailing me this week from Hanle where he and others are climbing local peaks \u2026. A reasonable share of GMT time costs about the same as the Hanle telescope, and the timescale for completion would be no different<\/em>\u201d. This prompted IIA to look into other international projects like the Thirty Meter Telescope  (TMT) and the 40-m European Extremely Large Telescope  (E-ELT) projects along with the GMT.  A national group was formed in 2008 consisting of major astronomy institutes in the country including ARIES, IUCAA, RRI, IIA, and TIFR. Since then, I have been heavily involved in this project: first, in 2010, as a national coordinator along with Prof. Ramaprakash for selecting one of the three projects (TMT, GMT, and E-ELT – European-Extremely Large Telescope) and then later following India\u2019s decision to participate in the TMT project in 2014, as the Programme Director of the India TMT project overseeing India\u2019s in-kind contributions to the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, IIA has its own unique selling point of nurturing students in a more collegial way which is not that easy to find in many institutes. Joining IIA is the best thing that happened to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

About the author<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Eswar Reddy completed his PhD at IIA on the studies of evolved stars. Afterwards, he moved to the USA where he spent six years working on spectroscopic studies of stars to understand galactic evolution and nucleosynthetic aspects of evolved stars. He joined IIA in 2003 as a faculty member. Currently, he is a senior professor and the Dean of the faculty of sciences at IIA. He is also the program director of India TMT Center since its inception in 2014, and India\u2019s designated governor in the board of governors of the TMT International Observatory for India TMT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contact: ereddy@iiap.res.in<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eswar Reddy Often, people ask me how I entered this field. Let me admit. I chose astronomy as a career, not by design but partly accidentally and partly due to necessity. After our final year M.Sc at Venkateswara University, Tirupati, in 1990, my friends and I stayed back at our hostels for a couple more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1048,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[38,32,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1037"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3291,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037\/revisions\/3291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}