Highlights from Surveys of Galactic Star Clusters Using AstroSat – An IITACB Webinar

AstroSat is the first Indian space observatory launched and operated by ISRO. The Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on AstroSat has been producing excellent images in the far-UV since it started operations in 2015. Dr Annapurni Subramaniam, Director, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore leads two surveys using UVIT to study open and globular clusters. She has completed 17 publications in the UVIT Open Cluster study (UOCS) series that cover blue stragglers, white dwarfs, sub-dwarfs and planetary nebulae. The Globular cluster UVIT Legacy Survey (GlobULeS) has produced a far-UV catalog of several globular clusters, detection of a far-UV dim HB population in the most massive globular cluster Omega Centauri along with the binary blue straggler population of the core-collapsed cluster NGC 362. In this webinar, she summarises the important results that she and her team have obtained from these two surveys and the open questions arising out of these studies.