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Mahesh

02/04/24 04:53 AM IST

125 years of Kodaikanal Solar Observatory

In News
  • In 1792, the British East India Company established the Madras Observatory, a first of its kind in this part of the world.
Observations
  • Several important observations were made here – the spectroscopic observations taken during the August 18, 1868, total solar eclipse from Guntur in Andhra Pradesh led to the discovery of helium, the Universe’s second-most abundant element after hydrogen.
  • For the first time, celestial and solar photography were attempted from the Madras Observatory during the total annual solar eclipse on December 12, 1871.
  • Scanty rainfall over south India during the winter monsoon of 1875 triggered one of the worst droughts the country had experienced till then.
  • Multiple failed crops over the famine-stricken peninsular India killed 12.2 to 29.3 million people across the Madras and Mysore Provinces during 1875-1877.
  • The drought was thought to be due to multiple reasons – solar activity; cool Pacific Ocean conditions followed by a record-breaking El Nino (1877-1878); strong Indian Ocean Dipole and warm North Atlantic Ocean conditions.
Study of Sun
  • Being the primary source of energy, life on Earth is supported by the Sun. Any change on the solar surface or its periphery could significantly affect the Earth’s atmosphere.
  • Powerful solar storms and solar flares can be potentially harmful to Earth’s satellite-based operations, power grids and navigational networks.
  • The KoSO (Kodaikanal Solar Observatory), which has been imaging the Sun for over a century now, has a rich repository of data.
  • This is extremely useful not only to reconstruct the Sun’s historic past but also to link its behavioural changes to better understand and predict its future and its impact on life on Earth and Space weather.
Historical Background
  • In 1895, Lord Wenlock, the then Governor of Madras, laid its foundation stone.
  • Supervised by Smith, who went on to become the first director of the renamed Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KoSO), the ongoing civil construction picked pace.
  • By the end of the 1900s, the main observatory building and the two adjacent domes were built and ready to accommodate instruments.
  • The Bhavnagar Telescope, named after Maharaja of Bhavnagar, operated during KoSO’s nascent years.
  • This 16-inch Newtonian (later Cassegrain) mobile telescope remained India’s largest from 1888-1968.
  • It was imported from Dublin, Ireland, and was first established at the Maharaja Takhtasinghji Observatory in Poona (now Pune) around 1888.
  • However, the Poona observatory closed down and the telescope was sent to KoSO in 1912.
  • Some of the early solar observations at KoSO included the examination of the Sun’s disc from spots and faculae; tracing bright lines from the Sun’s chromospheres and prominences; visual and photographic observations of bright lines widened in the spectra of sunspots; measuring solar radiations on clear sky days and the direct photography of the Sun in monochromatic lights of calcium and hydrogen.
  • The radial motion of sunspots, better known as the Evershed Effect, was discovered from the sunspot observations made at KSO by John Evershed, KoSO director from 1911-1922.
  • The Government of India separated Astrophysics from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in April 1971. The KoSO was brought under the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru on April 1, 1971.
  • KoSO is the only observatory offering high-resolution digitised images for such a long period (with coverage of more than 75 per cent).
  • Today, it houses a spectrum of advanced instruments like the H-alpha telescope to perform full disc imaging, a White light Active Region Monitor (WARM) with calcium and sodium filters to make full disc simultaneous observations of the photosphere and chromosphere layers of the Sun, a solar tunnel telescope and more.
Source- Indian Express

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