NSRCEL Startups: AstronEra
World’s first astronomy dedicated E-learning portal AstronEra by Shweta Kulkarni is incubated at NSRCEL through WSP 2.0 Shweta Kulkarni, a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, is one of the 100 women incubated at NSRCEL through the WSP. Her start-up, AstronEra is a web-based application for the popularisation of astronomy in purely scientific temperament and in a creative way.
It hosts the astronomy-related short eLearning courses and a community to share the latest astro news with like-minded people. Fellowship of the royal astronomical society is very prestigious for anyone and very few Indians hold it including Dr. Jayant Narlikar. Shweta is one of the youngest women to have received this honor. Her start-up will be the world’s first astronomy dedicated e-learning portal. “Astronomy is the base of all sciences and helps inculcate scientific temperament in the society. With the latest technology of web-based application, the E-learning astronomy dedicated courses will be hosted on an online portal” she said in her portal (www.astronera.org) release which was a grand event at IUCAA.
Talking about her experience at NSRCEL, she said “WSP has been great as it gave me exposure to new opportunities and initiate my work about which I have been dreaming for the last 5 years”. The Israeli Astronomical Association is the oldest and most active society in Israel. It was founded in 1952 and its current center of activities is the Givatayim Observatory. Shweta is invited to attend the night sky observation program organized by the society. She will also be giving a talk for the members of the society. WSP has seen many such ventures which are impacting the society. Hers is one such initiative that focuses on the problems faced in the domain-specific education and accessing of it by larger mass.
In this regard, Astronera is addressing the lack of scientific temperament and lack of awareness about the field of astronomy in areas with no easy access to authentic astronomy material and no easy access to the less light-polluted sky.
