DKPA : Glimpses of Astronomy on Indian Stamps

The Modern Astronomy ...

Karl Jansky, an engineer at the Bell Laboratories, detected radio noise emanating from the centre of the galaxy. Initially he too thought these were caused by some interference in his directional radio antenna. He even drove out the pigeons he found roosting inside the antenna. Extraterrestrial radio emission caught the fancy of the public but the astronomical community remained unaffected. Grote Reber verified Jansky’s findings with a 9.5 metre parabolic reflector antenna in his backyard. He published a radio map of the sky. In India the first radio telescope became operational in 1970 at Udhagamandalam in Nilgiri hills. Its reflecting surface is made up of 1100 numbers of thin stainless steel wires each 530 metres long. The natural slope of the hill of 11 degrees has been used to align the telescope parallel to the earth’s axis. The Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT) is depicted in the stamp released on March 23, 1982.

In 1917 Albert Einstein presented a mathematical model of the universe in which the total volume of space was finite yet had no boundary or edge. N Meghnad Saha and Satyendranath Bose brought out an English translation of Einstein’s papers on relativity. SN Bose wrote several papers on electromagnetic properties of the ionosphere and statistical mechanics. NM Saha is famous for his development of thermal ionization equation in 1920. This equation has remained fundamental in all works on stellar atmosphere. Homi Jahangir Bhaba founded the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in 1945. Balloons were launched from TIFR facility for cosmic ray studies. This started India’s space programme in a modest way. Another facility to come up was the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad under Vikram Sarabhai in November 1947. All these people have been honoured on Indian stamps over the years. TIFR is depicted in a stamp issued on February 9, 1996 to mark the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of TIFR.