Kodaikanal Solar Observatory: A History

Key Points

• 1The British East India Company established the Madras Observatory in 1792.
• 2The first dedicated solar observations were recorded in 1878 from the Trigonometrical Survey Office in Dehradun.
• 3The Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KoSO) was established under the meteorological budget in August 1893.
• 4Scotland-born Charles Michie Smith was entrusted to locate an ideal site for setting up this solar observatory in undivided India.
• 5Systematic observations commenced on March 14, 1901.
• 6The radial motion of sunspots, better known as the Evershed Effect, was discovered from the sunspot observations made at KSO by John Evershed.
• 7The KoSO was brought under the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru on April 1, 1971.