“The sky is everywhere, even in the dark beneath your skin.” — Wisława Szymborska

Astronomy is a wonderful field where we get to observe the stars, galaxies and the universe at large — a hobby of immense interest for our ancestors! Famous American astronomer Carl Sagan once said that knowing about the cosmos is like knowing ourselves, since the cosmos is both outside and inside us. Probably, that is why we feel an innate attraction towards the cosmos!

Radio Spectroscopy is a specific field in ‘Observational Astronomy’ where celestial objects which emit electro magnetic rays in the radio frequencies can be detected. …

In 1844, Girish Chandra Dey established this sweet shop. He used to be specialized in making sweets only from ‘Sandesh’ and absolutely no other ‘rosher mishti’ and hence, he started the production of sweets only out of sandesh. Soon, Nakur Chandra Nandi, the son-in-law of Girish Chandra Dey joined his business to bloom a flourishing sweet business in British Kolkata. The shop has been witness to many great historical events like the independence of India. It has supplied specially hand-made sweets to various celebrities like during Aiswarya Rai Bachan and Abhishek Bacchan’s wedding, during when Kolkata Night Riders won the IPL 2014, etc. …

After the COVID-19 pandemic took its toll, most of the educational institutes were sealed off and physical interactions between the faculty and students literally vanished. The IITs were no exception. A digital framework for classroom interactions is a short-term solution that several institutions adopted — however, it showed a lot of drawbacks as times progressed. Amidst a prolonged lockdown schedule, IIT Kharagpur finally took its stand nearing the end of May, 2020.

IIT Kharagpur announced that term-end exams would not be taken and results of students would be determined on mid-term exams and several continued internal assessments. The decision was taken following the discussions during the Senate meeting and subsequent feedback received from the students’ council. A committee was even formed to decide on the rules and marking schemes. Though this procedure gives a viable solution to the inability of students to access the campus of IIT KGP, there are a few drawbacks. Continued internal assessments might be a little fast-paced for some students as they take subsequently more time in understanding concepts and practice to apply them. Added on that, if any particular faculty is relatively inexperienced, short modules of teaching might prove detrimental to fundamental understanding of some students. Results of internal assessments are solely decided by the teachers and/or examiners, who might want to produce only positive results for benefit(s) in staff circle, hence internal examinations are prone to bias. Having a jury of faculty analyzing exams, internal exams mostly have a limited circle of analysts, hence it is prone to favouritism and bias to some extent. Internal assessments might also lead to unnoticed plagiarism by students on their part, since they mostly have internet connections at home — which can lead to them not realizing concepts on their own and not applying them on their own. Hence, the natural learning process of students might get corrupted through internal assessments. …

© Spandan Mallick; All Rights Reserved

All Pictures are clicked by me or my associates, until otherwise mentioned.

Situated in the District of Alipurduar in the north-eastern corner of West Bengal, Buxa Tiger Reserve was declared as the 15th Tiger Reserve of the country in 1983. This picturesque reserve comprising the Terai, Bhabar and hilly landscape upto even altitudes of 1800 metres, is dissected by numerous rivers and rivulets. However, Buxa Tiger Reserve is just one of the many sites in Buxa, a compact village containing the Reserve, about 30 kilometres from the town of Alipurduar. The Buxa Hills even stretch to these places, from the southern edges of Bhutan. As published by reports of the Directorate of Forests, Government of West Bengal, wilderness of Buxa Tiger Reserve viewed from a satellite reveals to be the largest dense chunk of remaining forests in West Bengal. The total area of the Reserve, according to the reports, is 760.87 square kilometres, of which 386.07 square kilometres has been constituted as
‘Wildlife Sanctuary and National Park’ and the balance area as Reserved Forests and Other Protected Forests. Nearest airport is Bagdogra Airport, 195 km away. …

NOTE: This whole publication is totally researched and all data have been acquired using inputs from locales and some ground test reports. All the pictures have also been uniquely captured by me and my associates during this trip (until specially mentioned). The story was also published as a Cover story in the newspaper The Telegraph in Schools (TTIS).

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Spanning for more than 10,000 square kilometers (3900 square miles), is located the largest continuous stretch of a littoral (or tidal) forest named ‘The Sundarbans’ in the lowest stretches of West Bengal, India and Bangladesh. The Sundarbans delta is a rich reservoir of flora and fauna due to its extremely dynamic physic-chemical factors. This highly dynamic zone supports a diverse gene pool of micro and macro biotic communities, in which mangrove vegetation occupies a major status. It serves as major nexus between terrestrial and estuarine aquatic ecosystems. Sundarbans is actually famous for its unique Royal Bengal Tiger and the almost endangered species of Fiddler Crabs. It received its name from the famous Sundari tree that grows in abundance in here. According to current estimates, the tiger population has increased from 103 to some two hundred or so in recent time. …

“I love the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night!”
— -Sarah Williams

When you gleam at the night sky pockmarked with shiny dots called stars… do you ever realize that we have such a shiny candidate waiting just 150 million kilometers away from us — its called the ‘Sun’.

But — what we actually do not know is that even stars have ‘lifestyles’ (though not life) even!

So, lets start from the very inception of a star.
So, how are stars actually born? …