Himansh Rathore

Astronomy in Indian Languages (2025)

An initiative started by myself and my colleague Barnali Das, where we are creating educational videos in Indian languages with the goal of spreading Astronomy knowledge to a wide range of communities in India. We want to ignite curiosity and imagination for the Universe from a scientific standpoint. These videos are non-technical, and are suitable for any audience.

Our first video (in Hindi) explores various wonders of the night sky, and can be found on youtube.

TIMESTEP - Github & Version Control (2024)

As a graduate student leader in the TIMESTEP undergraduate career development program at the University of Arizona, I developed a comprehensive tutorial (with hands-on exercises) on utilizing version control and github.

This tutorial was aimed towards undergraduate students at U. Arizona with the goal of introducing them to the software development and software maintainence standards in academia and industry. The tutorial can be accessed here.

CosmicVarta (2023-24)

CosmicVarta is a platform for promoting Indian Astronomy research in a non-technical way. We encourage Indian Astronomers to write about their research in a way that is engaging as well as understandable to a wide audience. We help edit those writings and then publish it on our website. We also have resources on how to pursue a career in astronomy.

I have been a scientific editor and a core team member of CosmicVarta. I have authored as well as edited articles on this platform, and have overseen the editing process.

Articles Authored:

Star-forming S0 Galaxies in SDSS-MaNGA: fading spirals or rejuvenated S0s? Authored by Himansh Rathore and Kavin Kumar. The article can be found here.

Articles Edited:

Solar cycle 25 is going to be a bit stronger than cycle 24! Authored by Pawan Kumar. The article can be found here.
Nuclear Pasta in the crust of neutron star; Authored by Vishal Parmar. The article can be found here.
The ghost of a star screams 6 days after its death; Authored by Harsh Kumar. The article can be found here.
Collisions between galaxies: A frequent phenomenon than we expected earlier; Authored by Gourab Giri. The article can be found here.

Krittika Python Tutorials (2019-21)

A set of comprehensive python-for-astronomy tutorials created by our collective efforts through Krittika, the Astronomy Club of IIT Bombay. These cover several aspects of python programming with modules like numpy, scipy, astropy and matplotib in an easily accessible format.

These tutorials are particularly aimed towards undergraduate students across different institutions, with the purpose of helping them acquire the essential programming background to start Astronomy research. These tutorials are accompanied by exercises based on Astronomy applications. The tutorials can be accessed here.