| Abstract : | Astronomy as a subject has the potential to remove the barriers between people and unite them in a hope of understanding the cosmos. However, even though cutting edge research is being carried out across India, a communication gap exists between the researchers and the younger students as well as the general public who may not be familiar with the technical details. Professional astronomers publish their research in peer-reviewed scientific journals in a highly scientific language that may be full of jargon. This makes the content incomprehensible to not only the interested reader not well versed with that area of research but also to novice students who are not dealing with the subject on a day-to-day basis. To bridge this gap, we present “CosmicVarta”, a student-led initiative, that works as a ‘Platform for promoting Indian astronomy research to the public’. We plan to bring together the entire Indian astronomy community to our portal, where researchers will explain their research in a non-technical language. Through this portal, prospective students may find information regarding positions at research institutes, state and central universities, and various open-source software and databases that are available publicly. We also plan to publish interviews with eminent scientists and professors as well as researchers to motivate young people towards a career in astronomy. Since its inception, we have managed to publish articles frequently and our page views have garnered significant interest from people interested in astronomy. We will present some more details about our portal, how it works, what are the challenges we encounter and how people involved in research can contribute to our effort. With the help of ASI, we hope that CosmicVarta will be able to reach a wider audience of interested readers. |
