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ShareMumbai: The six-member students' team that represented India at the 14th International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) has topped the event in the medal tally with five gold medals and a silver, making this their best performance in 11 years.
The Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) is the nodal centre responsible for training and selecting Indian teams for various Olympiads.
"This is the third instance of India winning five golds at the IAO. But this time it was only a six-member team, as compared to eight members in 2005 and 2006. This rounds up a great year for the 'Astronomy Olympiad Programme' in India. Along with a good result at the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), we can call this the best performance in the last 11 years," said Dr Aniket Sule, academic coordinator of the India Astronomy Olympiad Programme.
Students from Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh participated in the 14th IAO, held in Hangzhou, China from November 8 to 16, and 17 teams from 16 countries competed in the event, which tested them on astronomical theory, data analysis and knowledge of the night sky.
The Indian team, which returned to Mumbai on Tuesday, said that getting selected was a tough task. "The selection process is rigorous and the fact that we had cleared such a difficult test already gave us an advantage over other teams," said Nitesh Kumar Singh, a student of the city's Atomic Energy Junior College.
Prafulla Dhariwal, a student of Kalmadi Shamrao High School (Pune), said the camp papers at HBCSE were "more difficult" than those they solved in China. Dhariwal was the overall winner in the junior category and had the highest victory margin.
Sule said that while China usually dominates other Olympiads in the medal tally, India mostly secures first or second rank in the astronomy olympiads. "We try to select students who have a mindset suitable for pure science and astronomy. The selection tests are also non-conventional, with open-ended questions to gauge how students react," he said.
