IN school, Renu Chawla, would often miss her geography classes to sneak into the library and pull out a large, heavy book balancing on the tips of her black school shoes. Her hands could barely reach the top shelf where the astronomy books were. With the book in her hands, she would walk impatiently to a table close by. Hours would go by just gazing at the planets, the constellations, luminescent galaxies, and wonders in the deep-sky. Now she's a full-time journalist, but continues to gaze at the sky. "It's a lifelong affair, this love affair never dies," she says.

Through the centuries the night sky has intrigued, charmed, and tantalised mankind.  Poems of Kalidasa have references to conjunctions, occultation and eclipses Vincent Van Gogh painted the Ursa Major in his famous Starry Night over the Rhone. And how can one forget the great French science fiction writer, Jules Verne?

Ashmeet Singh, a class XII student at Birla Vidya Niketan, couldn't agree more. "When you look at the night sky you realise how oblivious you are to its charms." Ashmeet's mother Harneet Kaur had got him to attend astronomy classes in Class VIII to distract him from cricket. "Now Ashmeet wants to become an astrophysicist," she says almost surprised by the way her son's life has changed.
It was at Nuh, in Haryana, to be precise, Ashmeet says, that his life changed. He had gone with SPACE, a volunatary group that organises school trips for children, to observe the night sky.

Saturn was his first celestial observation. "I was over the moon!" When Ashmeet graduated from an avid observer to a good amateur astronomer it was time to invest in a telescope. "It wasn't easy to convince my parents," he says, "but since I was scoring well in school they relented."
It doesn't require much to set up an observatory at home says Anurag Garg, a PhD student. "All one needs is a lot of passion and an open, clear view." Anurag's suggestion to a beginner is that first observe the sky with the naked eye. If the interest in the night sky persists then invest in binoculars, and if it still persists then invest in a telescope.

But it's not necessary to have an observatory at home to pursue your interest in the stars and planets. Manjari Mitra, deputy manager, editorial, school solutions group at Tata McGraw-Hill, saw untold stories in the constellations she saw. She stumbled upon astronomy while studying English Literature at Venketeshwar College. "But remembering names of constellations was difficult," she says.
When Dr. Rathnasree, director, Nehru Planetarium, told her that there was a story to each of the constellations, Manjari started exploring Greek, Roman and Indian mythology: the main source of the names of the constellations. "It was a fascinating discovery for me to see how mythology and astronomy were linked."  This field is referred to as archaeoastronomy.

Soon Manjari turned into a storyteller, narrating tales from Indian mythology to children. The story of the Krttika is her favourite. She draws the constellation on a page and the need to tell the story is evident from the way her eyes light up.
  "Saptarishi (the constellation of seven stars or the Great Bear) were seven sages married to seven sisters named Krttika. One day, the God of fire, Agni, emerged from the flames of a sacrificial offering performed by the seven Rishis and immediately fell in love with the seven Krttika. Trying to forget his hopeless love for the seven beauties, Agni wandered in the forest where he met Svaha (the star Zeta Tauri). Svaha was at once infatuated with Agni.
To conquer Agni's love, Svaha disguised herself as sixth of the seven Krttika. But could not mimic the seventh sister - Arundhati, who was too devoted to her husband - Vashishtha, to be imitated! When Svaha gave birth to a child named Skanda, rumours began to spread. Enraged, the six Rishis banished their wives. The six Krttika went away to become the Pleiades! Only Arundhati remained with her husband and was also given a place in the constellation. She is represented by the star Alcor and she remains with her husband who is depicted as the star Mizar."
Educators at schools and planetariums are much in demand points out Dr Rathnasree. "This is one area where we would need more and more people." And for this, passion for astronomy is enough, one needn't be a BSc or an MSc in physics.
But Anurag who was an educator says that students still need better exposure to astronomy. "There's no chapter dedicated to astronomy in the school syllabus." "Obviously change in education system would be important," says Vishnu Reddy, the discoverer of Bharat asteroid.

However, Indian astronauts such as Sunita Williams and the late Kalpana Chawla, and the successful launch of Chandrayaan 1, India's first lunar spacecraft, have popularised space science, observes Anurag. And to a large extent, SPACE has popularised amateur astronomy points out Ashmeet who himself has made astronomy quite popular in his school. But the city sky is no longer a joy to watch. Light pollution is the bane of modern living. "Now there's no sky, no stars," rues Dr Rathnasree. She's distracted by the commotion outside her office. A TV crew is keen on her sound bytes on the solar eclipse. "People can go to the NASA website to know everything they want to on solar eclipse."

She's looking for a box that she had got especially made by a carpenter for school children to view the solar eclipse. "The solar eclipse was a great opportunity for astrophotography," says Dr. Rathnasree pointing to the pictures of famous astrophotographers, Babak A. Tafreshi and Mike Simmons. Ajay Talwar, an Indian astrophotographer and President Eclipse Chasers Athenaeum, talks excitedly about the recent solar eclipse. "I was part of the eclipse flight." The eclipse flight was India's first initiative to observe a celestial activity so closely. The passenger flight went up to 41,000 feet above the ground and held over Gaya till the eclipse time and it was a non-stop flight.

Astrophotography is unusual yet simple says Talwar who started taking pictures at the age of 24. "Someone in my block got a telescope and I got inspired to get one and that's how it started." All one needs is a tripod and a camera, and take pictures over long exposure time, he says. "In fact, any camera at home will give great results, whether film or digital." The Orion nebula is his favourite object in the sky. "It's the easiest yet the toughest to photograph."
Even though Dr. Rathnasree has done her PhD on Stellar Revolution, the beauty of the stars still overwhelms her. Krttika, the star cluster, is her favourite. "It's just beautiful."

She refers to Walt Whitman's poem When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer. She adds that even astronomers who deal with image processing, data collection and mathematical calculations are awed as much by the skies as amateur astronomers, even poets and artists. "I feel at peace when I look at the sky," says Talwar. Watching the night sky has changed Ashmeet in a more fundamental way observes his mother. "When he won the national Bal Shree Award, I was thrilled to bits, but he simply said that it was really nothing." Ashmeet smiles: "When I see the grand celestial world through my telescope I feel insignificant. Watching the stars has humbled me." He then looks up at the sky. "You need to be a bit crazy to pursue astronomy."

The journey of an Indian astronomer   Vishnu’s affair with the stars started one summer night when there were regular power cuts in his hometown, Sullurpeta, in Andhra Pradesh. He and his elder sister, Bindu, would come out in the front yard and look at the night sky filled with thousands of stars. He was eight years old then; and he would place his head on his sister’s lap while she pointed the different constellations to him. On those nights, Bindu often said to him: “If you have a telescope you can see all these stars and planets big and bright. You can discover many new things.” Later, when the sun would rise, he would spend hours drawing constellations and rockets on his slate. “Sullurpeta is about 20 km from Sriharikota, the place where all our rockets are launched from,” Vishnu says with much enthusiasm. When Halley’s comet came around in 1986, his parents read him accounts of observations by a lecturer in Coimbatore published in the local newspaper (The Hindu). This sparked an interest in comets and small bodies in Vishnu’s mind. When he was in Class 11 he approached a local telescope-maker, also a teacher, Professor Devdas. “I first wrote to M/S Gorandas Desai, official agents of Carl Zeisis Telescope, but the price was exorbitant.” His father could only afford a local telescope. Weeks before the telescope arrived, Vishnu made The Space Centre Library (in Sriharikota) his second home, devouring books on all aspects of astronomy. “It was here I read my first Sky and Telescope and Astronomy issues.” But he learnt how to see the night sky from Prof. K. Sakthivel, the same physics teacher in the PSG College, Coimbatore who had observed Halley’s comet. Vishnu was studying Filmmaking then at GRD College of Science, which was about 5 km from PSG. “On many weekends we used to travel to distant mountain tops to observe the sky. Those were some of the best days of my life as an amateur astronomer.” He came to New Delhi to become a journalist. “I joined the Asian Age as a Sub-editor.” And in no time, he joined the Amateur Astronomers Association of Delhi (AAD) and began frequenting the Nehru Planetarium, New Delhi. Then in 2000, he met Professor Tom Gehrels of University of Arizona for an article he was doing for his paper. “But what came out of the interview was more than just a front-page article. It changed the course of my life.” On his way back to the hotel, Professor Tom Gehrels told Vishnu – they were in the same cab – that there was little research being done on asteroids in India. Vishnu was fascinated with asteroids and comets “as they are the only cosmic objects (apart from the Sun) that can affect life on Earth in a human life time.” Vishnu decided to set up an observatory in India to do an extensive research on asteroids, but despite his efforts he could not. “I neither had CCD nor a good telescope.” But impressed with his dedication, Gregg Paris, California-based, veteran amateur astronomer and a retired USAF pilot, bought him a telescope which was then shipped to India. Though Vishnu managed to pay back Paris, he was left with little money. “I could not afford to buy a CCD.”  Almost defeated by his efforts, quite suddenly he decided to participate in a summer workshop on astronomy in Arizona in July 2002. With the help of internet friends, and with little money, he reached Tuscan, a desert town in Arizona (US) “which has 300 clear night skies in a year.” “I visited well-known asteroid-hunter Roy A. Tucker of Arizona, whom I knew again through Yahoo!” After seven relentless nights, on July 4 Vishnu discovered an asteroid. He named it Bharat. And on one such summer night, many years ago, Vishnu’s sister had said that one day he would discover new things in the sky. Perhaps this was written in his stars. Now Vishnu is doing his PhD in planetary sciences from the University of North Dakota focusing on composition of asteroids that threaten the Earth. From searching researching, is a long but exciting journey for Vishnu.