Digitisation of longest continuous solar observations can help explore impact of variations of the Sun on climate

Source: The post is based on the article “Digitisation of longest continuous solar observations can help explore impact of variations of the Sun on climate” published in PIB on 20th February 2023

What is the News?

The longest continuous observations of the Sun taken from Kodaikanal Solar Observatory (KoSO) have been digitized and made available for community use.

What is the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory(KoSO)?

The Kodaikanal Solar Observatory is a solar observatory owned and operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. 

It is located on the southern tip of the Palani Hills 4 kilometers from Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu.

Achievements: The Evershed effect was first detected at this observatory in 1909. (The Evershed effect named after the British astronomer John Evershed is the radial flow of gas across the photospheric surface of the penumbra of sunspots from the inner border with the umbra towards the outer edge).

–The Solar data collected by the observatory is also the oldest continuous series of its kind in India.

What is the significance of the digitization of solar observations?

KoSO has been providing continuous and long-term uniform solar observations for over a century now, many of them taken in the form of photographic images.

Digitizing these observations can help scientists around the world strengthen their studies of solar variability and its impact on climate, spanning it over a longer timescale.

These historical observations can enable us to understand the behaviour of the Sun in its earlier phase, and based on that, one can predict its future.