Exploring the Cosmic Re-ionization with India’s AstroSat by Prof. Kanak Saha [23 Aug, 2024]

Chandra Public Lecture
[ Part of IUCAA National Space Day Celebrations ]

Exploring the Cosmic Re-ionization with India’s AstroSat
Talk By. Prof. Kanak Saha

Summary : Soon after the Cosmic Dark Age, our Universe, less than a billion years old, went through a phase transition - from being made up of neutral matter to having its matter ionized... for the second time! Today, most of the matter between galaxies is ionized. One of the fundamental problems of current observational cosmology is to understand the nature of the sources that made the re-ionization possible. However, direct evidence to identify them is lacking at present. In this talk, the speaker presents how the Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope on AstroSat, India’s first space observatory, is helping astronomers to search for such galaxies and possible implication for the understanding of the re-ionization era.

About the event :
On 23 August, 2023, India became the fourth country to land on the moon and the first to reach its southern polar region. To honour this landmark achievement, this date was declared as “National Space Day” to be celebrated every year.
On this day IUCAA also restarts our public lecture series with a new name - “Chandra Public Lectures” - in honour of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, the 1983 Nobel prize winner Indian-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge about the structure of stars, stellar evolution, and black holes.