The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) is an autonomous institution set up by the University Grants Commission to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in astronomy and astrophysics in Indian universities.

IUCAA has a campus designed by Indian architect Charles Correa. It aims to be a centre of excellence within the university sector for teaching, research and development in astronomy and astrophysics.

Its activities fall under two broad programmes:

Core academic programmes include basic research, the PhD programme, advanced research workshops and schools, the giant metre-wave radio telescope and guest observer programmes.

Visitor academic programmes include the visitor and associates programme, refresher courses for teachers and helping the nucleation and growth of astronomy and astrophysics at Indian universities.

Facilities
IUCAA, along with Persistent Systems, Pune, operates the Virtual Observatory project. The observatory provides users access to raw observational data along with advanced processing software designed by engineers at Persitent.

IUCAA also maintains Girawali Observatory. In addition to catering to the needs of astronomers in general, this observatory is unique in setting aside a certain amount of time specifically for training and observational proposals arising from Indian Universities.

The telescope has a primary mirror of diameter 2 meter, f/3 and a secondary of 60 cm, f/10. IUCAA Faint Object Spectrograph & Camera (IFOSC) is the main instrument available on the telescope's direct Cassegrain port currently.

IUCAA, along with the Raman Research Institute and Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, declared a proposal to take 10% stake in the Large Telescope Project, which would allow Indian astronomers access to major upcoming observatories such as the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (EELT).

Contact Detail:
IUCAA, Post Bag 4
Ganeshkhind,
Savitribai Phule Pune University Campus
Pune 411 007, India
Tel: +91 20 2560 4100
Fax: +91 20 2560 4699