Jorhat, April 16: The Hubble is in his pocket and the space is his limit, literally.

Rongmon Bordoloi, an astronomer, a post-doctoral fellow with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, and the only person from Assam to have been awarded NASA's prestigious Hubble Fellowship, is raring to further his research in inter-galactic space matter.

"The Hubble Fellowship is awarded to outstanding post-doctoral scientists and I am among the 17 selected this year. The fellowship is given by NASA to those whose work is related to its Cosmic Origins programme and the fellowship is operated by STScI," Bordoloi told The Telegraph over phone from Baltimore.

He said he was excited at the prospect of doing further research on what has been his field of work for the past few years. His research interests include galaxy halo gas connection, gas flows in galaxies, intergalactic medium and photometric redshift.

"Currently, my primary research focus is understanding evolution of galaxies by studying the extended gaseous halos around them. These otherwise invisible gaseous halos can only be traced using absorption lines systems observed in the spectrum of background quasars or galaxies. You can assume there are lots of gases in space," he said.

Bordoloi said galaxies comprise only 17 per cent of gases, dust particles and other matter while 83 per cent of such matter lie outside the galaxies. "Galaxies are born and evolve all the time. Intergalactic space is very interesting," he added.

He said he counted atoms and measured how they moved in space. "What I observe allows me to study what kind of material is there, how much gas is there and to connect how these form galaxies."

"I have selected Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, as my host university where I will work from fall for the next three years," he said. Every Hubble Fellow will carry out the research at the host institution chosen by him/her.

The fellowship amount totals more than $250,000 for three years, the annual stipend being approximately $67,000 plus benefits and an additional allowance of $16,000 per year for travel and other research costs.

Parents Dipali and Pradip Bordoloi, residents of Choladhora here, are proud of their son's achievement. "He studied in vernacular medium at Balya Bhavan here and then went to Science College at Sotai in Jorhat district. He went on to do his MSc in Physics from Gauhati University. He has not only done us proud but the state as well," Bordoloi senior said.

Rongmon did his Master's again from ETH Zurich and his doctorate from that institute in mapping gas around galaxies at high redshifts.

Only a handful of Indians feature among the Hubble Fellowships being disbursed by NASA since 1990.

NASA's Cosmic Origins programmes are addressed by the Hubble Space Telescope mission, Spitzer Space Telescope mission, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission, the Herschel Space Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope mission.

The STScI is located on the John Hopkins University campus in Baltimore. According to its website, it is the science operations centre for the Hubble Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 1990, and for the James Webb Space Telescope scheduled to be launched in 2018.

"While Hubble is only ultraviolet light sensitive, James Webb will be infrared. With the launch of this telescope, the prospects and possibilities of seeing a lot more will be immense," Bordoloi said.