Project leader: Prof. Binil Aryal

June 3rd – 7th, 2013, Central Department of Physics at Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Workshop Programme & List of participants
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The Central Department of Physics at Tribhuvan University has been helping bring the world of Astronomy & Astrophysics to interested Nepalese students since 2008 by offering Astrophysics as an elective course in the Master’s level. No separate department or institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics is established to date in Nepal. In spite of this, more than 250 M.Sc. (Physics) students have chosen Astrophysics as an elective paper. These students are studying in the eight different colleges all around the country. All these colleges are affiliated with Tribhuvan University. To date 74 Master’s thesis have been completed in Astrophysics. Some of those Master’s thesis resulted in publications in high-level scientific journals such as MNRAS, A&A, and Ap&SS. At present, three graduates are involved in a Ph.D. and 16 are doing research work for their Master’s thesis in the department. The research areas are galaxy evolution, dust structures around PNe, White Dwarfs and Pulsars, chirality of large scale structure, modeling galaxy rotation curves and observational work (16 inch Schmidt telescope).

Keeping the aspirations of young students in mind, we have decided to organize a workshop in order to provide an extensive learning environment. We intend to provide an exposure to the virtual observatories, database, software and basic programming language which is commonly used in astrophysical research. Our aim is to familiarize students with the process of problem identification as well as problem solving procedures. The workshop is mainly for photometry and spectrometry. For this, we use the data available in the ADS/SIMBAD/NED/SkyView. We will focus on infrared and X-ray astronomy and use IRAS images and XMM Newton spectra using software AstroLinux, ALADIN and MATLAB (below for details).

This workshop will be organized by the Central Department of Physics, Tribhuvan University on its premises at Kirtipur, Kathmandu from June 3rd -7th, 2013 and will also be supported by the Ministry of S&T, the National Academy of S&T, the Nepal Physical Society and the Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Group.

Additional Information regarding publications, past & on-going Ph.D. research and M.Sc. dissertations are available online at http://astronepal.webs.com. The Central Department of Physics also have some experience of collaborative work and organizing/hosting conferences in the various aspects of A&A in the past.