Astronomical Award for an Indian Stargazer in the UK

Imagine being an Indian student living in Maharashtra and dreaming of becoming an astronaut one day while gazing up at the stars. Now, imagine winning one of the highest honours in astronomy in the world. This is what Professor Shrinivas Kulkarni of Caltech has done. He has received the Royal Astronomical Society’s (RAS) Gold Medal, which is the highest astronomy prize given in the UK since 1824, alongside such greats as Einstein and Hawking.

Kulkarni is known as a rock star of "time-domain astronomy" at Caltech, where he has worked for more than 40 years—a rock star! In "time-domain astronomy," he is able to see when a star blinks or explodes or produces a burst of gamma rays. His greatest accomplishment to date has been the creation of the Palomar Transient Factory and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) telescopes. Theses telescopes have allowed him to find thousands of these cosmic fireworks. "You build a big enough device and something will happen," says Kulkarni. He has an infectious energy and enthusiasm!

One of his most interesting moments as a graduate student was discovering a millisecond pulsar (a rapidly spinning star). He was so excited following the discovery of a millisecond pulsar that he couldn't sleep because of the excitement. He is currently working on projects for NASA's UVEX mission (scheduled to launch in 2030) and has plans to create the Z-Shooter spectrometer.