Our Story
From a train ride
to an observatory
How a single telescope bought without any plan turned into one of South India's most active astronomy communities.
2007
A train to Mumbai
It started with a long train ride to Mumbai to buy a telescope - without really knowing how telescopes worked, having barely even touched one. The instrument came home before the expertise did. Everything that followed was learnt by pointing it at the sky, again and again, and figuring it out.2008–2013
Hills, weekends, strangers
Once we knew enough to share, we started inviting friends - and friends-of-friends - out for overnight stargazing. Kolli Hills. Nandi Hills. Wherever the sky was darker than the city. No website, no brand, just a telescope, a thermos of tea, and people genuinely curious about what was overhead.2008–2013
2014
Settling at Shyam Farms, Kolar
We landed on Shyam Farms in Kolar as our regular weekend home, a quiet spot far enough from Bangalore's light pollution to actually see the Milky Way. The format crystallised here: arrive in the evening, telescope under the stars, theory around the campfire, breakfast at sunrise. And then the Bangarpet panipuri became a thing at our camp. The first paying camps ran the same year, and word spread quickly.2016
RiSa Astronomy is born
After nearly a decade of running these as informal weekends, we formalised the operation under the name RiSa Astronomy - a real brand, a real schedule, a real commitment to teaching properly. We weren't the first people in the country to point a telescope at the sky for paying guests, but we were the first to run organised, high-quality astronomy camps at scale. The template we built that year - telescopes under genuinely dark skies, theory around the campfire, breakfast at sunrise - is roughly the format most other operators in India now follow.
When we went to a farm at Kanakapura asking if we could host a camp for 50 participants, the farm owner laughed. He said he had asked a friend to bring a telescope once and none of his guests even left the bonfire. It was a huge disaster, he said. Of course, when we took our first batch of 50 participants, he was amused - they stayed awake almost all night.2016
around 2017
Beyond camps - schools and workshops
Schools in and around Bangalore began inviting us in. Solar astronomy sessions during the day, evening sessions for students and parents, NSS programs in government schools. We started taking the same patience we'd built for adult campers and applying it to a much younger, much more curious audience.2019
A campsite built for astronomers
We partnered with Girish Krishnamurthy, owner of Rocky Ridge Retreat, to build a dedicated campsite from the ground up - designed around the astronomy camp from day one. Open skies where they needed to be, lighting kept low and warm where it didn't, the campfire and telescope deck arranged so neither got in the way of the other.2019
2021
The 20-inch observatory
Our first permanent observatory came up - purpose-built to house our 20-inch telescope. It's where we run sessions for intermediate and advanced observers - the people who already know what averted vision means and want to chase faint nebulae and galaxies properly. more2023
The 16-inch beginner observatory
A second permanent observatory followed - this one built around our 16-inch telescope and dedicated to beginner events. The 16-inch is still a serious instrument, but it's the right size for a first telescope view of Saturn or the Andromeda galaxy. Most camp guests start here.2023
Today
Three sites, one mission
We operate across three locations - Denkanikottai (Tamil Nadu), Balyabane Camping in Coorg (Karnataka), and Highranges Farmstay in Idukki (Kerala) - running camps, school workshops, corporate events, online classes, and private astronomy sessions. Thousands of people have looked through our telescopes. Many leave wanting their own. We're glad to help them pick one too.
We also use these locations as hubs to sponsor astronomy programs for government school children, so the night sky reaches kids in the remote pockets of Coorg and Kerala that would otherwise never see a real telescope.
Today
A community, an education, a craft.
RiSa Astronomy is a small team that has stayed deliberately small. We teach because we still get excited every time Saturn shows up clean in the eyepiece. If you'd like to join us - at a camp, in a school, online, or for a quiet private session - we'd love to have you.
Behind RiSa Astronomy
Anish Kumar PV
RiSa Astronomy is run by Anish Kumar PV. Alongside the camps, school programs, and observatories, Anish has built and gives away two public tools that the wider astronomy community uses:
EclipseDB at eclipsedb.org - a 30,000-year solar and lunar eclipse catalogue with more than 142,000 events, used by researchers, students, and eclipse chasers around the world. Free, no signup, no advertising. Our eclipse-computation framework that powers it is published as an open paper on Zenodo: zenodo.org/records/19319453. A research contribution by Anish himself.
Orbit at astronomyapps.com - a full astronomy companion with planet tracking, ISS pass predictions, sky charts, eclipse finders, panchanga, nakshatra guides, and 55 calendar systems. Also free, also no signup, also no ads.
Both tools were built and are run as a service to the astronomy community at no cost to the user. They reflect the same idea that runs through the camps: astronomy is a subject worth teaching, and the tools to teach it shouldn't be locked behind paywalls.