Ashoka University is a private university located in Sonipat, Haryana, India, focusing on liberal arts and sciences. It was established in 2014.&nbsp;It is guided by an academic council of academics and scholars from around the world. The council sets the university&#39;s academic standard, advising on matters of curriculum, faculty hiring and research.&nbsp;

Ashoka University offers a full-time 3 (+ 1) year undergraduate programme. The University comprises of&nbsp;2500 plus students, with a mix of both national and international students.&nbsp; &nbsp;

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Ashoka University

To deliver the full science potential of the square kilometer array (SKA) telescope, several SKA regional centres (SRCs) will be required to be constructed in different SKA member countries around the world. These SRCs will provide high performance compute and storage, for the generation, of advanced science data products from the basic data streams generated by the SKA science data handling and processing system, critically necessary to the success of the key science projects to be carried out by the SKA user community. They will also provide support to astronomers to enable them to carry out analysis on very large SKA datasets. Construction of such large data centre is a technical challenge for all SKA member nations. In such a situation, each country plans to construct a smaller SRC over the next few years (2022 onwards), known as a proto-SRC. In India, we propose to construct a proto-SRC, which will be used for the analysis of data from SKA pathfinders and precursors with strong Indian involvement, such as uGMRT, Meerkat and MWA. We describe our thinking on some aspects of the the storage, compute and network of the proto-SRC and how it will be used for data analysis as well as for carrying out various simulations related to SKA key science projects led by Indian astronomers. We also present our thoughts on how the proto-SRC plans to evaluate emerging hardware and software technologies and to also begin software development in areas of relevance to SKA data processing and analysis, such as algorithm implementation, pipeline development and data visualisation software. © 2023, Indian Academy of Sciences.

World University root node

Department of Physics

Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy

Plans for building a prototype SKA regional centre in India

We present the results of timing and spectral analysis of the high-mass X-ray binary pulsar, Cen X-3, with the help of observations carried out using the Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter onboard AstroSat. As part of our analysis, we sampled the source properties during four different observation epochs covering two widely different intensity states. We obtain a timing solution and report precise measurements of the spin and orbital parameters corresponding to these observational epochs. The pulse profiles during the two intensity states reveal dramatically varying shapes within a time span of 1 month. We report the detection of one of the lowest measured frequencies of quasi-periodic oscillations at 0.026&nbsp;±&nbsp;0.001&nbsp;Hz for Cen X-3 during its low-intensity state. We also find correlated periodic and aperiodic noise components in the power density spectra. We further carried out a phase-averaged and a pulse phase-resolved spectral study, where we find that the best-fitting continuum spectrum is well described by an absorbed Comptonization model along with a blackbody. Cen X-3 exhibited the presence of the ∼28&nbsp;keV cyclotron resonant scattering feature absorption line and a ∼6.6&nbsp;keV Fe emission line in both the intensity states. Significant variations in the line-forming regions and mode of accretion for Cen X-3 within time spans of a month make Cen X-3 a highly dynamic persistent binary.