Solar and Stellar Physics

The group is interested in unravelling the physics of the magnetic coupling and dynamics of the solar atmosphere including its role in shaping up the space weather and climate using imaging and spectroscopic observations aided with hydrodynamic, magneto-hydrodynamic simulations, and machine learning. Prof Durgesh Tripathi is the Principal Investigator of the the brand new Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) onboard Aditya-L1 mission and providing, for the first time, observations of the lower and middle layers of the solar atmosphere in near and mid ultraviolet (200-400 nm) radiation using 11 different filters. These observations are providing wealth of information and constraints on various activities occurring in the magnetised solar atmosphere. Moreover, these are also providing information in the wavelength range central to the Sun climate relationship.

The IUCAA'STARS group is interested in stellar evolution and pulsation across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, Galactic archaeology, resolved stellar populations in star clusters and nearby galaxies, and near-field cosmology. The ongoing research is focussed on astronomical distances using stellar standard candles for improving the precision of the cosmic distance ladder and determining the present expansion rate of the Universe. We are involved in several ongoing ground and space-based time-domain surveys and the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory's LSST survey. We are also interested in stellar evolution and pulsation modeling using open-source 1D code in Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) software, and astrostatistics and data science applications in time-domain astronomy.