The studio
KYS started as one person figuring a mirror in a Pune garage. Nineteen years later the same hands sign the test report on a 400mm primary.
History
2007
Aparna Deshmukh figures and sells her first six mirrors to members of a Pune astronomy club. The star-test card starts here, on index cards.
2011
Four instruments, one page, sold at star parties. The Voyager Dobsonian in that catalogue is recognisably the one we still build.
2015
A 6m school dome in Nashik, taken on because nobody else would quote it. It is still running twelve years later.
2019
An interferometer and a 500mm test stand. From here every Summit primary ships with measured data rather than a claim.
2024
A 15m tilted dome inside a heritage shell that three previous surveys had called impossible.
2026
Instruments in 148 hands, domes in nine states, and the same person still signing the test reports.
How we work
Every dome we have ever installed was quoted after somebody from KYS stood in the room. Ceiling height, structure, air handling and the way people will walk in decide the geometry — a catalogue number cannot.
It makes our proposals slower to produce and considerably harder to argue with.
Gallery
By the numbers
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Instruments shipped
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Domes installed
6m to 25m
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States
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Students reached in 2025
We run open observing evenings at the Pune workshop on the first clear Saturday of every month.
Who you deal with
KYS is small on purpose. The person who designs the optics is the person who answers when you ask why the focal ratio is what it is.
Founder and optical designer
Ground her first mirror at fifteen and has not really stopped. Aparna figures and tests every Summit primary personally, and signs the interferometric report that ships with it.
Head of dome engineering
Structural engineer who came to domes through stadium roofs. Rehan is the reason the Tarangan dome touches nothing it was not allowed to touch.
Acoustics and show systems
Tunes rooms for the two things that never agree: an intelligible voice and an immersive score. Designed the variable absorption system at Nimbus.
Instruments and customer support
Star-tests every telescope before it leaves and answers the phone when it arrives. If your collimation card has a signature on it, it is probably his.