History
As early as 1881, Mr. Blanford, then Meteorological Reporter to the government of India, recommended "the improvement of the work of solar observations in order to obtain accurate measures of the sun’s heating power at the earth’s surface and its periodic variations". In May 1882, the Government astronomer at Madras, Norman Robert Pogson, proposed the need for photography and spectrography of the sun and the stars using a twenty inch telescope, which could be located at a hill station in South India.
On July 20, 1893 following a famine in Madras Presidency, which underscored the need for a study of the sun to better understand monsoon patterns, a meeting of the U.K. Secretary of State, Indian Observatories Committee, chaired by Lord Kelvin, decided to establish a Solar physics Observatory at Kodaikanal, based on its southern, dust free, high altitude location. Michie Smith was selected to be Superintendent. Starting in 1895 there was a rapid transfer of work and equipment from the Madras Observatory to Kodaikanal and the Observatory was founded on April 1, 1899.
The first observations were commenced at Kodaikanal in 1901. In 1955, ionosonde and geomagnetic facilities were installed at the Kodaikanal Observatory. Between 1922 and 1960 the directors were T. Royds, A. L. Narayan and Amil Kumar Das. In 1960 M. K. Vainu Bappu became director of the observatory. A 12 m solar tower with modern spectrograph was established in 1960 by A.K. Das and used to perform some of the first ever helioseismology investigations. Measurements of vector magnetic fields were initiated during the 1960s.
In 1977, many of the astronomers from Kodaikanal shifted to Bangalore and established the Indian Institute of Astrophysics.
Read more about this topic: Kodaikanal Solar Observatory
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