The following universities in Pakistan offer degrees in astronomy:
Department of Space Science, University of Punjab.
Headed by Dr. Muhammad Ali, the department owns the following telescopes:
- 14″ GPS LX200 Meade SCT
- 6″ Grubb achromatic refractor
The 14″ telescope is used very rarely, the reason being cited as its hand-controller which has developed some issues. Many students at the department have never seen the instrument.
The 6″ is a classic, manufactured in the early part of the the twentieth century. It is housed in an observatory which unfortunately remains permanently locked and nobody is allowed to enter.
Institute of Space and Planetary Sciences (ISPA), University of Karachi
Headed by Dr. Shahid Qureshi, this department has a 6″ Carl Zeiss refractor. The telescope is housed in an observatory atop a hill overlooking University Road. In recent times, the telescope has occasionally been used for outreach. Some of the problems faced have been highlighted at the end of this article from The Dawn.
I tend to agree with part of what Dr. Qureshi and another person, a SUPARCO official, have to say in this article. One of my class mates in engineering university was from Chitral. He was encouraged to obtain an astronomy degree from ISPA and offered lots of support by an official there (I don’t remember the name but I suspect it must have been Dr. Shahid). I have seen his heaps of astronomy notes myself. He was in his first year when he scored a slot in the merit list of the aptitude test of engineering university. He opted for engineering and left his astronomy degree. Now he’s an industrial electronics engineer and works in Islamabad.
The Institute of Space Technology (IST), Islamabad
Offers undergraduate programs in:
as well as masters degrees in the following departments:
- Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics
- Department of Communication Systems Engineering
- National Centre for Remote Sensing & GIS
COMSATS Institute of Technology
COMSATS planned to offer a course in astronomy. They tried to get funding to acquire a C14 telescope which they hoped to use for remote observing but sadly could not succeed. They have an astronomical society though which owns a Meade 8″ SCT and possibly a Televue telescope.
Zain