Forays into the World of Astronomy, Technology, and Space

Abstract

My fascination with astronomy can be traced to my childhood in the small township of Ernakulam in the southern Indian state of Kerala in the early 1940s. With practically no background effects from city lights, the nights in those years were virtually lit up by the star-studded sky in its fullest grandeur, creating in my mind, a sense of awe and wonder. I still fervently recall the beautiful sight of the Milky Way that strung like a necklace across the night skies of Ernakulam. This spectacle is difficult to experience these days in any urban site.

This chapter is reproduced from the contribution of K Kasturirangan to the publication “One Hundred Reasons To Be A Scientist” by Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) at Trieste; as a part of its 40^th Anniversary commemoration. K Kasturirangan was among 100 most eminent Physicists and Mathematicians with some connection to ICTP selected from across the world to communicate about what attracted them to science as youngsters and kept it alive.