{"id":2099,"date":"2020-08-01T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=2099"},"modified":"2025-06-09T07:14:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T07:14:17","slug":"meeting-the-milky-way-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=2099","title":{"rendered":"Meeting the Milky Way…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chayan Mondal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seeing the night sky filled with uncountable stars always amazes the one who loves to see it. The journey of exploring this vast universe begins its first footstep with the introduction of the night sky. The experience of observing it starts adding the colours to the canvas of imagination. The more you get to see, the more you fall in love with it. For the same reason, the opportunity to work as a researcher at IIA comes with a dream to witness the beauty of the night sky from the observatories. These are among the few places, where you can get the closest to your imagination of the sky. Without an exception, it happened so one day.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The magnificent Milky Way (Image credit: Ms Ramya Manjunath and others)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

It was during the August of 2015, when I had just completed the first year at IIA as a research student. We got an opportunity to visit the Kodaikanal Observatory. It was just in time as me and my batchmates were very much eager to visit the observatories and see the telescopes and the night sky. Thanks to the professors and a group of senior students, who took all the hurdles to organize a workshop, which made our journey to Kodaikanal possible. As the place is a hill station and it was the month of August, the weather was expected to be cold. We were supposed to leave early in the morning from Bangalore. So, all the planning and preparations were done overnight. The excitement of travelling itself was huge, as we were told that it would take the whole day to reach the observatory and there could be vomiting due to the up-hill ride. We started our journey from the campus on board a bus and reached Kodaikanal after evening. Right from the moment we reached, I started feeling the essence of an astronomical observatory so far I have imagined. The location, the weather, nature, and the campus, all together made the best impact on me as a researcher. Those three days of our stay at Kodai are among the best times of my journey at IIA. We enjoyed every second with new learnings and experiences. There are many memories to be remembered forever from that visit. Apart from the lectures and friendly discussions, we could archive plenty of memories in our natural hard drive, which will never be erased until it is crashed. Walking through the beautiful campus, visiting the nearby sites, dinner with a bonfire and music, boating in the Kodai lake – everything seems so much alive, even today. Among all those memories, the one which will certainly be there forever is of seeing the Milky Way for the first time in my life. I still don’t have the proper words to express the feelings of that first experience. That night, we were coming back to the guest house after our dinner and saw the sky on the way. It was spectacular and exquisite and probably beyond any proper adjective. Most of us stopped walking and just stared at the sky for a few minutes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was cold and dark and I couldn’t remember how long we had talked with the Milky Way. The colours of imagination, which were painted new on that night, will remain bright forever. <\/em><\/mark><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We just enjoyed that moment together by filling our heart with similar pleasures. Before we came to the observatory, we were told that there could be bisons inside the campus and we must be careful during night. As a result, many of us decided to return to the guest house after a while. But, the eagerness to see the unveiled beauty again, took some of us back there. We had two binoculars and this time we took them with us. Some of the seniors arranged their camera to capture the beautiful Milky Way. I, together with my friends, took the binoculars and lied on the ground for a long time to witness every bit of the unveiled eternal beauty. We could see a few star clusters as well, which we had only seen in the textbooks. Moreover, I was amazed by the thought that we know so little of what we can see and we see so little of what actually is there in the sky. It was difficult to believe that we sleep every night under the same sky, but hardly get a chance to see it the way we saw it that night. The sunrise next morning made me feel like I just came out of a dream, which I was living for so long. We came back to Bangalore next Sunday, but it took almost a week to get back to the rhythm of the city life again. I could feel that the sky without the Milky Way is so much empty. Since then, I have had a few more opportunities to see the Milky Way and every time it has amazed me with new surprises and happinesses. But our meeting at Kodaikanal will remain special forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the author<\/strong>
Chayan Mondal<\/strong> is a Post-doctoral Researcher at IIA and works in the field of extragalactic star formation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/mark><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chayan Mondal Seeing the night sky filled with uncountable stars always amazes the one who loves to see it. The journey of exploring this vast universe begins its first footstep with the introduction of the night sky. The experience of observing it starts adding the colours to the canvas of imagination. The more you get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","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":[24,18],"tags":[95,91,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099"}],"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=2099"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3206,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions\/3206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}