IIT Kanpur conducts workshop to train for using ISRO’s Aditya L1 Mission data

For this workshop, a total of 50 students were selected, of which 30 were from outside and 20 from IIT Kanpur and local universities. They were selected based on their academic performance in their respective courses.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) organised the fifth Aditya-L1 workshop. This three day workshop was jointly organised by the Department of Physics at IIT Kanpur and Aditya-L1 Support Cell at Aryabhatta Observational Science Research Institute (ARIES), Nainital.
For this workshop, a total of 50 students were selected, of which 30 were from outside and 20 from IIT Kanpur and local universities. They were selected based on their academic performance in their respective courses.
Through this workshop, the institute aimed at training selected final year undergraduate (UG), MSc, and PhD students in the utilisation of upcoming data from the satellite.
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The second day of the workshop focused on introducing the observational aspects of the Sun. It covered how scientists observe various phenomena on the Sun, such as solar flares, solar wind, solar coronal mass ejections, and solar energetic particles. Participants were given hands-on training in using the magnetohydrodynamic code PLUTO, a numerical code for computational astrophysics used to understand the origin of solar storms.
Participants also visited the Plasma lab of Prof. Sudeep Bhattacharjee in the Department of Physics to learn about the generation and confinement of plasma in the laboratory. “As the Sun is essentially a spherical ball of plasma, this lab visit provided participants with a real sense of what plasma might look like. Additionally, participants visited the accelerator lab of Prof. Aditya Kelkar in the Department of Physics to learn about the acceleration of particles like electrons and protons, a process that occurs continuously in the Sun,” the official release stated.

The third day of the workshop was dedicated to the Aditya-L1 mission, where participants, after gaining theoretical and observational understanding, were facilitated to appreciate the complexity of mission payloads, the institute said.
Aditya-L1 is a mission by ISRO, where a satellite has been launched to the Sun for the first time by India to study the Sun, its atmosphere, and its effects on Earth.