Speakers at the Solar Eclipse Workshop

We are fortunate to have some of the world renowned ‘Eclipse Personalities’ conducting sessions in the Solar Eclipse Workshop. We, at SPACE, are truly honoured to have such an august presence at the Solar Eclipse Workshop. The participants of the workshop will benefit greatly from the talks and discussions and will be able to prepare for the upcoming eclipses in India much more constructively and successfully.

Prof. Jay Pasachoff, The famous eclipse chaser of 47 eclipses, Jay M. Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College, where he teaches the astronomy survey courses as well as advanced seminars and works with undergraduate students on a variety of astronomical research projects, including one studying the atmosphere of Pluto. He is also Director of the Hopkins Observatory and Chair of the Astronomy Department there. Pasachoff received the 2003 Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Pasachoff has observed 47 solar eclipses. He is Chair of the Working Group on Eclipses of the International Astronomical Union. His research is currently sponsored by the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the National Geographic Society. His studies of the sun also include ground-based and space-based observations of the solar chromosphere. In addition, he is collaborating with colleagues to observe occultations of stars by Pluto, Charon, and other objects in the outer parts of the solar system. With Glenn Schneider, he is studying transits of Venus and Mercury. Further, he works in radio astronomy of the interstellar medium, concentrating on deuterium and its cosmological consequences. At the time of the fateful General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union at which Pluto was placed in a new category called dwarf planet, he was president of its Commission on Education and Development. He is coeditor of Teaching and Learning Astronomy: Effective Strategies for Educators Worldwide (2005). Pasachoff is coauthor of The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, 3rd Edition (2007), and author of the Peterson Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, 4th edition (updated 2006), as well as author of Astronomy: From the Earth to the Universe, 6th edition (2002). His books about the sun include Nearest Star: The Exciting Science of Our Sun and The Solar Corona, both with Leon Golub as coauthor; and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Sun. See
http://www.solarcorona.com/.
http://www.williams.edu/Astronomy/eclipse/
http://www.williams.edu/Astronomy/people/jpasachoff/

Prof. Ashok Ambastha of Udaipur Solar Observatory, is closely connected with eclipses. His current research interests include Solar energetic transients: energy buildup and trigger mechanism of flares, CMEs, Velocity and magnetic fields in active regions, Local and global helioseismology, Solar eclipses and planetary transits, Prof. Ambastha has been studying large flares and their photospheric, chromospheric and helioseismic responses in recent years. His experimental plans for July 2009 solar eclipse using balloon and/or aircrafts and spaceborne coronagraph for obtaining synoptic coronal intensity and polarization maps in green and red lines.
http://www.prl.res.in/~ambastha/
http://www.prl.ernet.in/~ambastha/personal.html

Prof. Arnab Rai Choudhuri Professor, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore is a leading Indian theoretical astrophysicist working on MHD problems in astrophysics primarily related to the Sun. He has worked on other astrophysical systems (AGNs, jets, accretion, pulsars) as well. The generation of solar magnetic fields by the dynamo process and the formation of sunspots by the buoyant rise of flux tubes are the two subjects on which he have written the maximum number of papers.
He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences.
The Solar Dynamo and Our Code Surya : The solar dynamo theory explains the origin of the sunspot cycle. In a Winter School in Kodaikanal during December 2006, he delivered a series of lectures giving a pedagogical introduction to solar dynamo theory. He and his students have developed a code named Surya (a Sanskrit word meaning the Sun) for solving the basic equations of solar dynamo theory. He has prepared a guide for using this code and made it public in 2005. If you are interested in using the code Surya, send a request to him through e-mail.
http://www.physics.iisc.ernet.in/~arnab/

Mr. Jay Anderson is the first name that comes in any eclipse chaser mind when planning for a site and its weather statistics. His work on eclipse weather predictions is well known in the world. Jay Anderson has been looking at eclipses and eclipse climatology for nearly 30 years, helping to make the shadow experience more rewarding (and more certain) for those inclined to stand within the umbra. He is co-author of the NASA eclipse circulars with Fred Espenak, a meteorologist, an astrophotographer, a tornado-chaser, and a research associate in an Arctic climate change program. Jay’s weather studies help expeditions find the area with the best weather prospects, though it has caused his hair to turn prematurely grey and fall out.
After high school, Jay worked in the Arctic for two years, and sailed the Northwest Passage for two summers. He carried a 4 1/2-inch telescope with him, but “there wasn’t much opportunity for observing — it was daylight for 24 hours in the summer, and too cold in the winter.” After three years and a hitchhiking tour of South America, he moved to Vancouver and the University of British Columbia, acquiring degrees in physics and astronomy, his wife Judy, and a job as a weather forecaster with the Meteorological Service of Canada. Sent to Winnipeg in 1974, he was delighted to discover, on perusing a copy of Oppolzer’s Canon of Eclipses, that he was living right under the track of the 1979 total.

Jay compiled a study of weather prospects for the 1979 eclipse that was widely distributed to eclipse chasers. “That was my introduction to the world of eclipse fanatics.” he notes. A planetarium friend asked him to produce another study for the 1984 eclipse over Indonesia and New Guinea; the friend then passed a copy to another and another and another… “One day, I received a phone call from someone in New York, asking if he could send the study to the U.S. Naval Observatory. I agreed, and two days later, the USNO called, asking for a fresh copy and permission to reproduce it. The version they had received had been copied so many times that it was unreadable.” Jay has been producing studies of the climatology along eclipse tracks ever since. When the USNO ceased publication of the eclipse circulars, Jay joined with Fred Espenak to continue them under NASA auspices. Since those early beginnings in 1979, Jay has travelled the world, scouting and observing eclipses. The eclipse later this January will be his 20th time under the shadow of the Moon.

Jay Anderson is now retired as a meteorologist and teaches courses in meteorology, climate change and storm chasing at the University of Manitoba. He is also an avid amateur astronomer (a hobby that began in 1963) and editor of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~jander/

Dr. N. Rathnasree, Director Nehru Planetarium will be speaking on History of Eclipses and Transits. Dr. Rathnasree is an enthusiastic Professional-Amateur Astronomer and works tirelessly for promotion of amateur astronomy in India. Dr. Rathansree is actively involved in researching and restoring the Jantar Mantar, the observatory of Jai Singh built in 18th Century, at New Delhi and Jaipur.
http://nehruplanetarium.org/taarewiki/pmwiki.php?n=Profiles.Rathnasree
http://www.nehruplanetarium.org/eclipsewiki/pmwiki.php?n=PmWiki.Eclipsewiki

Mr. Sheridan Williams, Sheridan is 60 and a Council member of the British Astronomical Association. He was employed as a "Rocket Scientist" with the Ministry of Defence for 10 years; was a mathematics teacher and computer science lecturer for 10 years; managing editor of a computer magazine for 16 years; ran his own computer network company and retired in 2001. He is also a member of the Open University Astronomy Club. He built his own telescope in 1966 (200mm Newtonian). He has seen 12 central eclipses. Publications include books on UK Total Solar Eclipses, Bradt Travel Guides and various magazine articles and papers. Sheridan maintains two web sites dedicated to solar eclipses. His appearances on TV and radio include children’s TV and presenting Sky TV’s total eclipse programme from Cornwall in 1999. Sheridan lectures widely to astronomical societies, and other interest groups. He is also interested in computer processing techniques applied to digital astronomical images.
http://www.shindles.co.uk/eclipse.htm
http://eclipse.im/
http://clocktower.com/eclipse.htm

Dr. Satyendra Bhandari is an avid eclipse chaser, EX-SAC-ISRO Scientist. For the August 2008 eclipse he travelled to the arctic - Ny Alesund (Svalbard, Norway) to conduct his experiments.
Combining expertise in astronomical and space based remote sensing, Dr. Bhandari advocated the exploitation of Total Solar Eclipse events for the study of the Earth and its environment. He used formidable Indian imaging capability in space, in terms of 3 imaging sensors operating simultaneously on the geostationary orbit, to comprehensively image the earth with high space-time resolution in a most unique manner during the Oct. 24, 1995 Diwali Day TSE. He led the Indian Antarctic Eclipse Expedition to Maitri, Antarctica to successfully study shadow bands generated by the rare horizon grazing TSE on Nov. 23, 2003. Very recently, participated in the Indian Arctic Expedition to Svalbard, Norway to make observations during the Aug. 1, 2008. Solar Eclipse.

Mr. Xavier Jubier is the famous eclipse chaser from France and a veteran of 10 eclipse. His recent extreme adventure was viewing the Annular Solar Eclipse of 2008 February 7 from 4,897 meter high Mount Vinson, Ellsworth Land, Antarctica. His interactive google maps and the eclipse calculator are famous and used by eclipse enthusiasts all over the world.
Xavier Jubier is an engineer and currently works as an IT Manager in a multinational French company outside of Paris. He started to get involved with solar eclipses in the early 90's and now tries to combine three of his passions : solar eclipses, travel and photography.
He maintains a website related to eclipses and also works as an Associate at Eclipse-City. The successful midnight sun Antarctic total solar eclipse of 2003, observed from the ground by less than a hundred people near the Novolazarevskaya Russian research station, was the start of a new adventure. He joined two friends to form Eclipse-City, a new company dedicated to offer eclipse enthusiasts the best view of any solar eclipse. Eclipse-City's motto is "nothing is impossible": with a good friend Xavier went back again to Antarctica to observe the 2008 Annular from the summit of its highest peak Mount Vinson. He is now the only human being to have seen two eclipses in Antarctica. With Eclipse-City he also organizes personalized tours for International Research Institutions such as NASA, UH Institute for Astronomy, or ETH Zurich, as they have special requirements.
In early 2007 he released the 5MCSE (Five Millennium Canon of Solar Eclipses) web tool to allow the exploration of 11,898 solar eclipses. A simplified version of this tool was later adapted for NASA's website and the same tool was later released for the corresponding 12,064 lunar eclipses (5MCLE).
http://xjubier.free.fr/en/index_en.html

Dr. Krishnanand Sinha is a prominent Solar Astronomer at ARIES observatory Nainital.
http://aries.ernet.in/page_k.sinha.html

Prof. S.P. Bagare of Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, another eclipse chaser, who has shot wonderful shadow bands from his eclipse tour of the Antarctic.“

Mr. Eric Brown is an eclipse chaser. Years ago he started arranging for his friends to join him on eclipse chases and things kept growing as his circle of eclipse chasing friends continued to grow. On July 22nd, 2009, the shadow of the moon will reach the Earth's surface. Much of the path will sweep across China, and it is here that we will view the longest Total Solar Eclipse since July of 1991. As usual, he has visited the areas he will travel to, and he promises another value packed, complete holiday. This will be the 9th Total Eclipse Tour that he has put together, and it is sure to be another success.

Dr. Dipankar Banerjee an eminent and dedicated astrophysicist, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.
http://www.iiap.res.in/personnel/dipu/index.html

Dr. Hari Om Vats is an Associate Professor in the Astronomy and Astrophysics Division of the Physical Research Laboratory. His research interests are differential rotation of Sun, solar wind, space weather and the topical astronomical events e.g. eclipses, comets, meteor showers etc. He has a keen interest in popularization of science specially space science and astronomy among the young students and have given more than one hundred popular talks at various academic levels. He has to his credit more than 90 scientific publications and 10 popular science articles. He has worked on experimental and theoretical aspects of Scintillation phenomena. The proposal of unique shadow band experiment at Maitri grew out of this work. The inspiration of his parents led him to realize that science information and knowledge via Hindi medium will go a long way to help the curiosity of students and the science awareness among the Indian public at large and there is need to simplify scientific presentations. He translated in Hindi the comic books on the topics of space science and astronomy.

Chander Bhushan Devgun is a trained mechanical engineer with expertise in tool designing in production technology. He is also an amateur astronomer having 25 years of experience in telescope making, astrophotography and observational astronomy. a veteran of 5 total solar eclipse having watched almost 10 minutes of totality. He has also done pioneering work in Dobsonian telescope making in India. Spearheaded the telescope making concept for schools in late 90s under guidance of Late Dr. Nirupama Raghavan (ex director Nehru planetarium). Founder member of SPACE. Photography and books are his passion. Can be reached at cb@space-india.org

Mr. Vikrant Narang is an avid astronomer, eclipse chaser and an adventure lover, Vikrant works with SPACE as a Scientific Officer and where he is leading the research and development of various astronomy and space science related cources for school students. He has gained tremendous experience in science popularisation and works extensively on developing practical aspects of teaching and spreading astronomy and space sciences. He first witnessed a total solar eclipse at the age of 15 and has in total spent about 9 minutes under the shadow of the Moon. Vikrant has organised and conducted several Solar Eclipse workshops for Schools in New Delhi and surrounding region under the SPACE's project of HeliOdyssey to train and motivate more than 100 schools to conduct large scale public solar eclipse watches during March 29th 2006 and August 1st 2008 partial solar eclipses in India. These events have been a huge success with several venues being created for eclipse viewing in and around New Delhi where thousands of members of the public could view the Solar Eclipses. These events have been some of the largest organised Solar Eclipse viewing ever conducted in India. He has also been part of the core organising team of SPACE's international TSE expeditions - HeliOdyssey in March 2006 to Antalya, Turkey and in August 2008 to Novosibirsk, Russia. HeliOdyssey is a novel concept of SPACE where several school students from India are selected on the basis of a competition and sponsored to travel Internationally to view and conduct experiments during the Solar Eclipses along with a team of astronomers, scientist and media personnel. Vikrant also works voluntarily as the National Point of Contact for the Space Generation Advisory Council in support of the UN Programme on Space Applications where he provides a communication channel between students and youth space networks in India and the SGAC. www.space-india.org www.heliodyssey.org www.spacegeneration.org Ajay Talwar is an amateur astronomer of two decades in India. One of the prolific & foremost transient sky events astrophotographer in India. He travels with his telescope & all the photographic gear all over India to dark locations to shoot pictures of the night sky. He has handmade many a telescopes 12", 16" and a 20" truss Dobsonian. The 20" is the largest telescope made by any amateur astronomer in India and is christened 'USB' meaning 'Us Se Badi' (roughly translated as 'bigger than that'). Ajay suffers from a serious case of uncurable aperture fever, and is planning to build a 40 incher telescope for SPACE soon. Ajay loves to watch eclipses, both Solar & Lunar with binoculars, while his automated jig does the photographing part. Dr. James R. ("Jim") Huddle is a physics professor at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he teaches General Physics, Spectrometry, and a seminar on Energy Issues in the 21st Century.  In addition to his research interests in ion beam modification and analysis of materials, Dr. Huddle is interested in Halley's method of measuring the astronomical unit during a transit of Venus, and in using solar eclipses to teach young people about science. He has witnessed nine total solar eclipses, and has been a tour leader on five of those expeditions.  He is a regular contributor to the Solar Eclipse Email List (SEML). Dr. Huddle is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Association of Physics Teachers, Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society and the Center for Academic Integrity.