Events (2011 - 2012)

Successful  LIVE webcast of the Venus Transit in 6th June 2012. From 10.30 (UTC) 

SWAN remained an integral part of the academics of the nature Study camp organized by a local NGO at Indo-Bhutan Border on the 28th December. 

Successful  LIVE webcast of the Lunar Eclipse 10th December 2011 

Once again SWAN will webcast the Total Lunar Eclipse of 10th December 2011 from Siliguri. 

Shooting International Space Station:
The challenging mission has been taken up. The first trial run will be on the 24th of January 2011 at 14th hour from Canal Road, Siliguri.

Transit of Venus(ToV) 2012:
Brief account of SWAN Initiative

Organization: 
Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal.

Backed through intellectual materials by :
NASA (USA), Vigyan Prasar (Ministry of Science, Government of India),
National Council of Science Museums(NCSM. Ministry of Culture,
Government of India), Nehru Center and Planetariums (Allahabad), CBSAP
and many others.

Associate :
Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority, SJDA.

Activities:
Pre-event:
Special article on ‘How to shoot Transit of Venus’ by Debasis Sarkar
was published by ‘Science Reporter’ one of the most Prestigious Science Journal of Asia published by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, may 2012 issue,  as its lead article.

National level  residential resource person development workshop at Allahabad organized by Union Ministry of Science. Debasis Sarkar from SWAN remained there as faculty member and one of the coordinators of the workshop along with scientists from Vigyan Prasar, Solar observatories, Director Nehru planetarium. Avik Chakroborty and Sidharthaa Majumder, two other SWAN members were selected to be participants in the workshop

SWAN conducted over   20 workshops at different places in north Bengal for students to teach on safe solar viewing techniques. Total over 2500 students attended these workshops.

SWAN conducted special Solarscope making workshop at North Bengal Science Center. A joint initiative of SWAN and NCSM. Special low cost telescope cum Solarscope designed by Debasis Sarkar was demonstrated. 
All participants were guided to build their own set at NCSM’s expense.

On the Event day:

Multipoint LIVE webcast by SWAN through its own Webcast Channel. It was one of the six LIVE ToV 2012 webcasts officially listed by ‘Sky and Telescope’ at global level.

Total 10 telescopes including special solar telescope, 15 cameras, 20 computers , a make shift studio were used to organize the webcast.

LIVE Video feed collected from all five locations, Binnaguri, Siliguiri, Balurghat, Malda and Kolkata, were brought at the central control station established at Balurghat.  Visuals and audio were mixed in it and finally beamed for webcast through SWAN’s own webcast channel (available at www.skywatchersindia.com or www.livestream.com/swansiliguri) through the server at New York, USA.

Total 30,000 viewers from 86 countries have witnessed the show of 6 hours length. It was the only successful webcast of ToV from India.

Scientific activities conducted:

Shooting of Transit of Venus in High definition Video
Shooting of Transit of Venus in white light
Shooting of Transit of Venus in Low Bandpass
Shooting of Transit of Venus in High Bandpass
Shooting of Transit of Venus in extremely narrow bandpass to show
Solar activities. SWAN is the only amateur organization in India (If
not the whole world), to be successful in shooting  vital Third
Contact of the Transit in H Alpha.


SWAN expresses its thanks to all those who have extended their helping hands in different forms towards the success of the entire project. Amongst them, the support from SJDA, Techno India Group, Mahbert High School and Feedback computers were of unimaginably high importance.

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