Observing Compact Stars with AstroSat

This article presents a brief description of India’s AstroSat mission which is a powerful space based observatory for compact star research. An account is given of observational constraints and spectral and timing capabilities as realised post-launch. Some preliminary results of observations of the Crab pulsar and an X-ray binary system GX~301-2 are presented to illustrate some of the capabilities of the mission.