bulandshahr for 66yearold harswarup bhati the moon is no longer a beautiful silver dish shining in the night sky above when i looked at it through a telescope i saw numerous huge black spots i wonder why we hear so many songs and poems about its beauty he laughed harswarup is a resident of mukundgarhi village in bulandshahr one of the 100 villages that house astronomy labs set up using panchayat funds at local government schools toi spent several nights in these villages to witness what one villager called a small miracle these labs are equipped with a telescope spectrometer and a variety of pedagogical models depicting newtons laws of motion charts highlighting various aspects of astronomy have been put up everywherestarted as a pilot project on teachers day last year in sikandrabad rural bulandshahr the district boasts 109 labs set up within a span of six months we had proposed this project to roughly 160 gram panchayats and 100 agreed to set up these labs using their own funds each lab costs around rs 25 lakh said abhishek pandey chief development officer bulandshahr an ias officer and an iit engineer pandey has been a proponent of experiential learning in schools and communities he added the astronomy labs being established at primary and upperprimary schools are built around the new education policy and are aimed at stoking space curiosity at the community levelwe want to include both children and adults and explore possibilities of citizen science that means general public engagement in scientific research activities by using tools and resources provided to them he added the labs have generated a great amount of interest in astronomy both among children as well as adults every night village women make a beeline to gaze at the stars this endeavour has also led to the emergence of khagol doots astronomy messengers among selected school students with a keen interest in sciencethese messengers act as guides as well as help their teachers in managing the labsone of the khagol doots chanchal kumari a class viii student at a government school in village nizampur told toi we had only heard about kalpana chawla and her contribution to space science however after these labs i am beginning to understand what she was into there is a whole new world that we are now able to explore i have made up my mind i will become an astronomerthe spark of interest in these hamlets has generated international buzz recently the british high commission donated 35 computers to these labs in order to help children process streaming data from dozens of telescopes spread across the world in addition manu prakash a stanford university professor and worldrenowned innovator of frugal scientific instruments donated 500 foldscopes for free these foldscopes are lowcost microscopes but foldable so one can easily put them in their pocket another usbased ngo open field collective funded by national geographic formed by postdoctoral researchers of ivy league colleges in the us has partnered with