44th ASI Annual Meeting at IIT Guwahati

India's premier astronomy conference returned to the Northeast after thirty years, bringing 600 scientists to the IIT Guwahati campus for five days of presentations, talks, workshops, and region-wide outreach.

Published 20 May 2026 | Category Meetings and Conferences | Office Dept of Physics

A Return to the Northeast

The last time the Astronomical Society of India held its annual meeting in the Northeast, it was 1996, and Gauhati University was the host. Thirty years later, the 44th ASI Annual Meeting arrived at IIT Guwahati.

The inauguration on 16 May 2026 drew directors of some of India's most prominent astronomy institutions: Prof. Yashwant Gupta of NCRA Pune, Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Bengaluru, Prof. Dipankar Banerjee of IIST, and Prof. Manish K. Naja of ARIES Nainital, among others.

In his welcome address, IIT Guwahati Director Prof. Devendra Jalihal noted that such gatherings play an important role in inspiring young minds in the Northeast to connect with science and innovation. ASI President Prof. Devendra Ojha, in his presidential address, pointed to a future of large telescopes and next-generation observational infrastructure, and called the future of astronomy in India bright.

Behind the logistics was the Department of Physics at IIT Guwahati, with Prof. Santabrata Das serving as Chair of the Local Organising Committee. Prof. Das noted that hosting the ASI meeting in Guwahati made the event directly accessible to the growing community of astronomers in the Northeast.

Talks, Posters, and Workshops

Across five days, the conference hosted more than 140 scientific talks and 355 poster presentations spanning seven thematic areas — from the Sun and Solar System to galaxies, cosmology, high-energy phenomena, data science, and astronomy education.

On 15 May, a day before the formal inauguration, three full-day workshops ran in parallel, each oriented toward the frontiers of Indian astronomy.

The first workshop trained early-career researchers in X-ray spectral analysis of compact objects using AstroSat data, in the context of global missions like NICER, NuSTAR, and the upcoming LIGO-India.

Workshop 2 focused on radio astronomy from space — an emerging area in which Indian missions like PRATUSH and SEAMS are already in development, and where the lunar surface offers unexplored observational windows.

The third workshop introduced participants to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

The same evening, Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam, Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Bengaluru and recipient of the Vigyan Shri Award 2024, delivered a public lecture titled "A Decade of AstroSat — India's First Space Observatory." The lecture marked the opening of the conference week to a broader audience, setting the tone for what would follow over the next six days both on campus and across the region.

Outreach Across the Northeast

Running from 14 to 20 May — a day before the conference opened and a day after it closed — the North-East Astronomy Festival, organised by the Public Outreach and Education Committee of ASI and its partners, took the science off campus and into the city and the region.

Astrophotography exhibitions were mounted at Guwahati Planetarium and Guwahati Science City. Planetarium Sky Theatre shows and telescopic sky observation sessions were open to the public. Visiting astronomers gave talks at nearly 20 schools and colleges across Assam, in partnership with the Directorate of School Education and local organisations.

A Teacher Training Workshop was conducted with Guwahati Planetarium and Ellora Bigyan Manch. The Vigyan Pratibha Workshop, run in partnership with HBCSE-TIFR and IIT Guwahati, brought young science talent into direct contact with working researchers. A North-East India Astrophotography Competition invited participation rather than just passive attendance. Public lectures extended to Jorhat Planetarium, ensuring that the reach of the week was genuinely regional.

Looking Ahead: Continued Outreach in the Northeast

The conference's final session was devoted to the question of how astronomy outreach in the Northeast continues after the scientists go home — and it was anchored and led by astronomers and educators from the region.

The ASI meeting came to Guwahati for a week. The aim, as the closing session made clear, is for what it started to last considerably longer.