French President Emmanuel Macron, who is the chief guest at India’s 75th Republic Day celebrations, arrived in Jaipur today on his two-day state visit. During his nearly six-hour stay in Jaipur, the French President visited the famous solar observatory Jantar Mantar along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Established by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh, Jantar Mantar has been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in July 2010. It showcases India’s expertise and scientific progress centuries before independence.

Jantar Mantar: When architecture meets science

The world’s largest solar observatory, Jantar Mantar comprises a set of eighteen instruments such as –

• The Laghu Samrat Yantra is a sun dial that helps calibrate the local time to an accuracy of 20 seconds.
• There are quadrangles on both sides of the triangular wall situated in the north-south direction. The shadow of the wall moves equal distances in equal time intervals on the quadrilaterals. This activity is calibrated to read local time.
• The western and eastern quadrants are further divided into 6-hour sub-divisions for 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 divided into three divisions of 20 seconds each.
• Sun dials are used to determine the position of the Sun in the hemispheres. It is made up of two parts: one indicating when the Sun is in the Northern Hemisphere (March to September) and the other indicating when the Sun is in the Southern Hemisphere (September to March). The shadow of the iron rod (gnomon) shows the local time of Jaipur city.
• Zodiacs, which are instruments for measuring celestial latitude and longitude of celestial bodies. There are twelve instruments that represent the twelve signs of the zodiac. The measurement is made when the corresponding sign of the zodiac crosses the local meridian.
• These instruments are placed in the northern and southern hemispheres depending on the angular position of the Sun.
• It is the largest sun dial in the world which shows local time with an accuracy of two seconds.
• The middle wall is laid in a north-south direction with an angle to the 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”, after which, the two global leaders are set to begin their bilateral meeting at around 7:15 pm.