The Directorate of Higher Education had initiated a ‘Master Class Series’ for teaching faculties of Universities and Colleges on November 18that Sanskruti Bhavan, Directorate of Art and Culture, Panaji. The purpose of this master class series is to build capacity and to enhance the quality of higher education in the State of Goa through exposure to new thoughts and ideas.
The topic of the Master Class Series Lecture was “The Dawn of Space Exploration” by Dr. James Rhoads and Dr. Sangeeta Malhotra, Astronomers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, USA.
Dr. Sangeeta commenced with the first session on Infrared Eyes on the Cosmic Dawn. She spoke about astronomy, galaxies and infrared light. She explained about Webb specialization in infrared light and shared her experiences and learnings from various projects she has worked on. She said that galaxy seems to be moving away i.e. space stretches and as light travels, it stretches even more. She mentioned that they are trying to find about Green Peas i.e. local versions of primordial galaxies. She also explained about JWST Telescope. She summarized her session mentioning that JWST is exceeding expectations for finding galaxies at the dawn of light. They are building a wide field mission in the infrared.
The second session was on ‘The dawn of Space exploration or perhaps Space exploration of cosmic dawn’ by Dr. James Rhoads. He spoke on exploration that is enabled by new tools. He also said that they can explore the moon on Mars by sending a space probe but other galaxies are too far away to visit, hence they explore them using telescopes. He covered the various functions of telescope and focused on explaining about the Roman Space Telescope which is expected to be launched in 2026.
The master class series was attended by Dr. Sheetal Arondekar, Mr. Ajinkya Kudtarkar, Mr. Gajanan Haldankar, Mr. Ramkrishna Reddy and Ms. Swati Bhat.
