Khagol Mandal

Khagol Mandal is a volunteer-run association of amateur astronomers established in 1985, a year before the return of Halley's Comet, by a small group of enthusiasts who wanted to bring astronomy to the general public. It has since grown to a membership of over a thousand. The organisation is registered under the Public Trust Act and the Societies Act, and donations to it carry Income Tax 80G exemption. It is run entirely by volunteers: the organisers, speakers and telescope handlers are all amateur astronomers who give their time without payment, and a committee of managing trustees oversees its affairs. Its work covers public sky observation programmes, basic and advanced astronomy courses, lectures and slide shows, study tours to sites of astronomical importance, and telescope-making workshops. It maintains a library of more than five hundred astronomy books along with instruments for field observation, and publishes astronomy writing in Marathi and English. Khagol Mandal has organised public solar eclipse observation tours across the country, held a conference on conserving the Lonar meteorite crater, and in 2023 hosted the first International Pro-Am astronomy meeting.