AstroSat is India’s first dedicated astronomical observatory in space with multi-wavelength payload on a single platform. It enables simultaneous observations in the desired wavebands. The increase in the number of payloads has also led to an increase in the complexity in space segment design, groundsegment design, and mission operation management. Each payload instrument and mainframe has its own constraint for the operation, which needs to be satisfied to ensure the safety of the systems. In this paper, we explain the challenges in ground operations for mission management with various constraints. Also, we list the various constraints, both geometric and otherwise, with respect to the mainframe systems and payload instruments of AstroSat.

Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) is one of the 5 instruments on AstroSat satellite, which was launched on September 28, 2015. UVIT was designed to make images with a resolution of <1:8$''$, simultaneously in two ultraviolet channels: Far Ultraviolet (130–180 nm) and Near Ultraviolet (200–300 nm). Images are also made in visible region (320–550 nm) for tracking drifts in pointing. The shortest wavelengths to be observed with UVIT can be heavily absorbed by mono-molecular deposits/contamination on the optical surfaces.Keeping contamination under control in UVIT was a major challenge and it required a variety of actions: (i) strict control of the payload materials and process, (ii) mechanical configuration, (iii) baking of all the parts to release all the adsorbed molecules etc., (iv) assembly in ultra cleanrooms, (v) pre-inspection and auditing of all the areas, in which UVIT was placed, for any potential for contamination, (vi) continuous purging, with ultrapure nitrogen gas, till a few days before the launch, etc. In order to minimise any possible cross contaminationsfrom the other payloads/satellite, the doors of UVIT were opened 2 months after the launch. The high performance in the orbit and high stability of the sensitivity over 4 years in the orbit shows that the contamination was negligible. This paper presents the processes and protocols followed during the integration and testingphase to minimise the contamination in order to prevent any performance degradation.

In this work, we study the synthetic explosions of a massive star. We take a 100 $M_{\odot}$ zero-age main-sequence (ZAMS) star and evolve it until the onset of core-collapse using $\mathtt{MESA}$. Then, the resulting star model is exploded using the publicly available stellar explosion code, $\mathtt{STELLA}$. The outputs of $\mathtt{STELLA}$ calculations provide the bolometric light curve and photospheric velocity evolution along with other physical properties of the underlying supernova. In this paper, the effects of having a large Hydrogen-envelope on the supernova light curve have been explored.We also explore the effects of the presence of different amounts of nickel mass and the variation of the explosion energy of the supernovae from such heavy progenitors, on thebolometric light curves and photospheric velocities.

Young star clusters consisting of massive stars are the ideal sites to study the star formation processes and influence of massive stars on the subsequent star formation. NGC 1893 is a young star cluster associated with the Hii region Sh2-236. It contains about five ‘O’-type stars and several early ‘B’-type stars. It is located at a moderate distance of $\sim$3.25 kpc and has a reddening, $E(B - V)\sim 0.4$ mag. To characterize the young low-mass stellar population in the central portion of the cluster, we carried out deep $VI$ band observations of the region using the $4{\rm K} \times 4{\rm K}$ CCD IMAGER mounted on the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope. Our analysis shows that the present data are deep enough to detect stars below $V \sim 24$ mag. Wefound optical counterparts of $\sim$220 candidates, including young stars and unclassified cluster members from Caramazza et al. (2008). We estimated the membership probabilities of the Gaia sources (mostly bright starswith $G$ < 19 mag) located within the cluster radius using the Gaia EDR3. Toward the fainter end, we used the optical color-magnitude diagram (CMD) to select the cluster members from a sample of young stars. The locations of young stars on the CMD show that a majority of them are low-mass stars with age <10 Myr. The unclassified candidates and X-ray sources from Caramazza et al. (2012) are also found to be young low-mass stars. In total, we identified $\sim$425 young stars with age <10 Myr, and 110 of these are new. Most of these stars appear as kinematic members of the cluster. By examining the CMD for the stars in the cluster region, we suggest that the cluster has insignificant contamination due to field stars in the pre-main-sequence zone ofthe CMD. The slope of the mass function in the mass range $0.2 \leq M/M_{\odot} \leq 2.5$ is found to be $\Gamma=-1.43\pm 0.15$, consistent with those of other star-forming complexes. The spatial distribution of the young stars as a function of mass suggests that toward the cluster center, most of the stars are massive.

Optical follow-up observations of optical afterglows of gamma-ray bursts are crucial to probe the geometry of outflows, emission mechanisms, energetics and burst environments. We performed the follow-up observations of GRB 210205A and ZTF21aaeyldq (AT2021any) using the 3.6m Devasthal opticaltelescope (DOT) around one day after the burst to deeper limits due to the longitudinal advantage of the place. This paper presents our analysis of the two objects using data from other collaborative facilities, i.e., 2.2m Calar Alto Astronomical Observatory (CAHA) and other archival data. Our analysis suggests that GRB 210205A is a potential dark burst once compared with the X-ray afterglow data. Also, comparing results with other known and well-studied dark GRBs samples indicate that the reason for the optical darkness of GRB210205A could either be intrinsic faintness or a high redshift event. Based on our analysis, we also found that ZTF21aaeyldq is the third known orphan afterglow with a measured redshift except for ZTF20aajnksq (AT2020blt) and ZTF19abvizsw (AT2019pim). The multiwavelength afterglow modeling of ZTF21aaeyldq using the afterglowpy package demands a forward shock model for an ISM-like ambient medium with a rather wider jet opening angle. We determine circumburst density of $n_0 =0.87$ cm$^{-3}$, kinetic energy $E_k=3.80 \times 10^{52}$ erg and the afterglow modeling also indicates that ZTF21aaeyldq is observed on-axis ($\theta_{\rm obs}$ < $\theta_{\rm core}$) and a gamma-ray counterpart was missed by GRBs satellites. Our results emphasize that the 3.6m DOT has a unique capability for deep follow-up observations of similar and other new transients for deeper observations as a part of time-domain astronomy in the future.

In the present work, recent characterization results of the 4K$\times$4K CCD imager (a first light instrument of the 3.6m devasthal optical telescope; DOT) and photometric calibrations are discussed along with measurements of the extinction coefficients and sky brightness values at the location of the 3.6m DOTsite basedon the imaging data taken between 2016 and 2021. For the 4K$\times$4K CCD imager, all given combinations of gains (1, 2, 3, 5 and 10 e$^-$/ADU) and readout noise values for the three readout speeds (100 kHz, 500 kHz and 1 MHz) are verified using the sky flats and bias frames taken during early 2021; measured values resemble well with the theoretical ones. Using color–color and color–magnitude transformation equations, color coefficients ($\alpha$) and zero-points ($\beta$) are determined to constrain and examine their long-term consistencies and any possible evolution based on UBVRI observations of several Landolt standard fields observed during 2016–2021. Our present analysis exhibits consistency among estimated a values within the 1$\sigma$ and does not show any noticeable trend with time. We also found that the photometric errors and limiting magnitudes computed using the data taken using the CCD imager follow the simulated ones published earlier. The average extinction coefficients, their seasonal variations and zenith night-sky brightness values for the moon-less nights for all ten Bessell and SDSS filters are also estimated and found comparable to those reported for other good astronomical sites.

Gamma-ray bursts are traditionally classified as short and long bursts based on their $T_{90}$ value (the time interval during which an instrument observes 5% to 95% of gamma-ray/hard X-ray fluence). However, $T_{90}$ is dependent on the detector sensitivity and the energy range in which the instrument operates. As a result, different instruments provide different values of $T_{90}$ for a burst. GRB 210217A is detected with different duration by Swift and Fermi. It is classified as a long/soft GRB by Swift-BAT with a $T_{90}$ value of 3.76 s. On the other hand, the sub-threshold detection by Fermi-GBM classified GRB 210217A as a short/hard burst with a duration of 1.024 s. We present the multi-wavelength analysis of GRB 210217A (lying in the overlapping regime of long and short GRBs) to identify its actual class using multi-wavelength data. We utilized the $T_{90}$-hardness ratio, $T_{90}-E_p$ and $T_{90}-t_{\rm mvts}$ distributions of the GRBs to find the probability of GRB 210217A being a short GRB. Further, we estimated the photometric redshift of the burst by fitting the joint XRT/UVOT SED and placed the burst in the Amati plane. We found that GRB 210217A is an ambiguous burst showing properties of both short and long class of GRBs.

In this paper, we present multi-band photometric observations and analysis of the host galaxies for a sample of five interesting gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) observed using the 3.6mDevasthal optical telescope (DOT) and the back-end instruments. The host galaxy observations of GRBs provide unique opportunities to estimatethe stellar mass, ages, star-formation rates and other vital properties of the burst environments and hence, progenitors. We performed a detailed spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling of the five host galaxies using an advanced tool called $\mathtt{Prospector}$, a stellar population synthesis model. Furthermore, we comparedthe results with a larger sample of well-studied host galaxies of GRBs, supernovae and normal star-forming galaxies. Our SED modeling suggests that GRB 130603B, GRB 140102A, GRB 190829A and GRB 200826A have massive host galaxies with high star-formation rates (SFRs). On the other hand, a supernovae-connectedGRB 030329 has a rare low-mass galaxy with a low star-formation rate.We also find that GRB 190829A has the highest (in our sample) amount of visual dust extinction and gas in its local environment of the host, suggesting that the observed very high-energy emission from this burst might have a unique local environment. Broadly,the five GRBs in our sample satisfy the typical correlations between host galaxies parameters and these physical parameters are more common to normal star-forming galaxies at the high-redshift Universe. Our results also demonstrate the capabilities of 3.6m DOT and the back-end instruments for the deeper photometric studies ofthe host galaxies of energetic transients, such as GRBs, supernovae and other transients in the long run.

In this work, we employ two publicly available analysis tools to study four hydrogen (H)–stripped core–collapse supernovae (CCSNe), namely, SN 2009jf, iPTF13bvn, SN 2015ap and SN 2016bau. We use the modular open-source fitter for transients (${\texttt{MOSFiT}}$) to model the multi-band light curves. ${\texttt{MOSFiT}}$ analyses show ejecta masses ($\log M_{ej}$) of $0.80^{+0.18}_{−0.13}$ $M_{\odot}$, $0.15^{+0.13}_{−0.09}$ $M_{\odot}$, $0.19^{+0.03}_{−0.03}$ $M_{\odot}$ and $0.19^{−0.01}_{+0.02}$ $M_{\odot}$ for SN 2009jf, iPTF13vn, SN 2015ap and SN 2016au, respectively. Later, modules for experiments in stellar astrophysics(MESA), is used to construct models of stars from pre-main sequence up to core collapse, which serve as the possible progenitors of these H-stripped CCSNe. Based on literature, we model a 12 $M_{\odot}$ ZAMS star as the possible progenitor for iPTF13vn, SN 2015ap and SN 2016bau, while a 20 $M_{\odot}$ ZAMS star is modeled as the possible progenitor for SN 2009jf. Glimpses of stellar engineering and physical properties of models at various stages of their lifetime have been presented to demonstrate the usefulness of these analysis threads to understand the observed properties of several classes of transients in detail.