Inspired By Bollywood Flick 'ABCD' And Power Of Facebook, Indian Scientist Builds Army Of e-astronomers

"The group’s activities go under hashtag #ABCDresearch – anybody can do research – and are widely followed. Since 2013, Dr Ananda Hota, radio astronomer at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences has trained over 100 e-astronomers."

SCAAA felicitates three scientists

"Three eminent scientists were felicitated with Samanta Chandrasekhar Jyotibigyani Samman by the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Amateur Astronomers Association (SCAAA) at the Institute of physics here Sunday. They are science writer and speaker Nikhil Mohan Pattnaik, former director Pathani Samanta Planetarium PC Nayak and Ananda Hota a faculty of Centre for Excellence in basic science, Mumbai . The awards were given to mark the Silver Jubilee function of SCAAA...

Discovery of a blue supergiant star born in the wild

"A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica or ASIAA, Taiwan) and Dr. Ananda Hota (UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in the Basic Sciences or CBS, India), has discovered a Blue Supergiant star located far beyond our Milky Way Galaxy in the constellation Virgo. Over fifty-five million years ago, it emerged in an extremely wild environment, surrounded by intensely hot plasma...

Exotic galaxy leaves tantalizing tale

"This is probably the most exotic galaxy with a black hole ever seen. It has the potential to teach us new lessons about how galaxies and clusters of galaxies formed and developed into what we see today,"
said Ananda Hota

"Located about 1.7 billion light-years from Earth, Speca is a radio source that contains a central supermassive black hole. As we have learned, galaxies of this type produce relativistic “jets” which are responsible for being bright at the radio frequencies, but that’s not all they create. While radio galaxies are generally elliptical, Speca is a spiral – reason behind is really unclear. As the relativistic jets surge with time, they create lobes of sub-atomic material at the outer edges which fan out as the material slows down… "
- Universe Today

Cosmic Leaf Blower and the Death of Two Galaxies

At that rate, any star-forming gas that's still hanging around will be driven out of the galaxy in about 10 million years — mere seconds from now in cosmic terms and so quickly that it's lucky Hota and his collaborators caught it at all. The whole process of transforming two young, vigorous galaxies into a single, feeble geezer, he estimates, takes about a billion years, which is still pretty fast considering that the spirals had probably been alive and healthy for 10 billion years or so before their unfortunate encounter. -TIME