French President Emmanuel Macron, who is the chief guest for India’s 75th Republic Day celebrations arrived in Jaipur on his two-day State visit earlier today. In his nearly six-hour stay in Jaipur, the French president along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the famous solar observatory Jantar Mantar.
Established by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh, Jantar Mantar has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July 2010. It exhibits India’s expertise and scientific progress centuries before independence.
Jantar Mantar: When Architecture Meets Science
The biggest solar observatory in the world, Jantar Mantar includes a set of eighteen instruments such as –
- Laghu Samrat Yantra which is a Sun Dial that helps to calibrate local time to an accuracy of 20 seconds.
- The triangular wall, situated in the north-south direction has quadrants on either side. The shadow of the wall moves at equal distances in equal time intervals on the quadrants. This movement is calibrated to read the local time.
- The western and eastern quadrants are divided into sub-divisions, each of 6 hours, for the morning and afternoon segments respectively.
- Each hour is divided into four fifteen-minute divisions which are further sub-divided into five-minute and one-minute divisions. Each one-minute division is subdivided into three divisions of 20 seconds each.
- The Sun Dial is used to determine the position of the Sun in the hemispheres. It is made in two parts: one indicating when the Sun is in the northern hemisphere ( March to September) and the other depicting the Sun in the southern hemisphere (September to March). The shadow of the iron rod (gnomon) depicts the local time of Jaipur city.
- Rashivalaya, which are instruments for measuring the celestial latitude and longitude of the celestial bodies. There are twelve instruments which represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. Measurement is done when the corresponding sign of the zodiac transits the local meridian.
- These instruments are placed based on the angular position of the Sun in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
- It is the largest Sun dial in the world which shows the local time with a precision of two seconds.
- The wall in the middle is placed in a north-south direction with an angle of local latitude, which is 27º N.
After visiting Jantar Mantar, President Macron will join PM Modi in a 1 km-long road show, “Shobha Yatra”, following which, the two global leaders are set to begin their bilateral meeting at around 7:15 pm.
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