Lunar Eclipse 2020

The existence of an amphitheatre on the Himalaya rooftop has come as a surprise to many. As of date, it’s been opened only about thrice in two years for Astronomy events, largely under the umbrella of the Astronomy Club. Curious as to how it began and the process involved in getting permissions for roof access, we reached out to club founder Yash Chaurasia, who was kind enough to help, and answer a few miscellaneous questions.

In 2018, Professor Praveen Paruchuri took the initiative to get the Himalaya Amphitheatre open for the students to view the Lunar eclipse. It was there that the current members of the Astronomy Club met and came up with the idea to start a club to organise more of these events. Yash Chaurasia, the founder, took this idea seriously and the Club hence came into fruition. 

Talking about roof access, the club has with a lot of hard work and persuasion managed to get the Academic office’s permission to get access to the Himalaya roof to organize events for the last two years with the help of Prof. Praveen, Prof. Subhadip (club mentor) and Prof. Prabhakar (who apparently used to take his students stargazing a few years back). They even got a telescope under their belt as of May 2019, a process that took almost an entire academic year. The telescope was the main attraction at this year’s Lunar Penumbral Eclipse – with people from all branches of college crowding around it for a look and singing songs under the stars. The experience was truly mesmerising. Here’s to hoping that the club hosts more events like these in the future.