Amateur city astronomers add starry touch to new Parliament

Pune: For 79 years, Pune-based Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, perhaps the oldest association of amateur astronomers in the country, has been meticulously recording the movement of planetary objects, and sharing data with national and international organisations.So, when the architects of the new Parliament building wanted to depict the constellation of stars on January 26, 1950, the day the Constitution was implemented, they turned to Jyotirvidya Parisanstha. “We helped them with the designs for the ceiling and the flooring of the Constitution hall in the new Parliament,” Aniruddha Deshpande, vice-president of the organisation, said. There was some challenge in its execution—the building is triangular while the sky is limitless. “We had to make proper projections. We told them about the planetary positions on the Delhi sky on January 26, 1950. They made the artwork and we checked the drawings and dimensions. The flooring has a design of the astrolabe, an instrument used for measuring the position of the stars,” Deshpande said. He was involved in the design along with association president Deepak Doshi and secretary Sagar Gokhale. The new Parliament was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 28. Similarly, architects for the construction of the Ram Mandir in Ayodha wanted the rays of the sun to fall directly at noon on the idol every Ram Navami. “We gave them predictions for a thousand years. They wanted the sun rays to penetrate through the spire of the temple. We suggested a hole be made at the top, but they did not agree. Instead, they opted for mirrors,” he said.The organisation does not charge for its services since it is a not-for-profit organisation. Jyotirvidya Parisanstha has been carrying out scientific observations and popularising astronomy since its inception in 1944.In the early 1900s, the timings of various planetary positions used to come in a printed format from England or France. But it stopped during World War II. So, 10 to 12 eminent people from Pune came together and decided to form Jyotirvidya Parisanstha, to record the timings of planetary positions. Their observatory opened in Kesariwada in 2015 and they submit their observations to the American Association of Variable Star Observers. “We cannot observe the stars during the day, so we collect data of around 15 to 16 hours from them,” Deshpande said. At the observatory, members carry out scientific observations of variable stars, eclipsing binaries, asteroid occultation, comets, lunar occultation, deep sky objects etc. These observations are often used by students for their BSc, MSc and PhD projects.Jyotirvidya Parisanstha also manages the India chapter of the International Occultation Timing Association in the US. They also observe meteors and submit data to the International Meteor Organisation in Belgium. They study asteroids and report their findings to the IOTA, which shares the data with the Minor Planet Center in the US, he added.The observations are carried out voluntarily by the members of Jyotirvidya Parisanstha. “At least three observers are there at any given time from October to May, when the sky is not cloudy. We have a team of 30 members who spend every night here by rotation. All the images are captured by software, but we need to mention how much exposure needs to be given, depending on brightness of the stars” Deshpande said. “We now want to encourage our members to publish papers in journals,” he added.