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Day not far when Rahul becomes PM: Pranab SP fields Sanjay Dutt from Lucknow LS seat *New Delhi, December 22* On the shortest day of the year, almost 200 people from different parts of the city came together to pay respect to our closest star: the sun. ?Today is the winter solstice. At one point in the day, the axis of the earth faces completely away from the sun. Because of this, people in the northern hemisphere experience the shortest day and the longest night,? explained Dr Rathnasree, director of Delhi?s Nehru planetarium. But what made the experience different was that Delhiites were able to trace the path of the sun on the ancient observatory of Jantar Mantar. *WHAT IS SOLSTICE* The earth moves around the sun in an orbit that?s somewhat circular. Simultaneously, it also spins on its own axis, which is tilted by 23-and-a-half degrees. It is this tilt that decides how much sunlight an area receives. When the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, it gets more sunlight and that causes summer. When it is tilted away, it is winter. The tilt also gives us two most important latitudes. During the summer, the sun seems to be moving towards the Tropic of Cancer and in winter it moves towards the Tropic of Capricorn. The point of the solstice is when this axis is completely facing away from the sun. The winter solstice happens when the Sun shines at the highest point in the sky in places that lie on the Tropic of Capricorn. For places that lie on the northern hemisphere, like Delhi, the sun seems to travel in a line that?s a lot lower in the sky. *WHY JANTAR MANTAR* Observing the sun dip takes patience, equipment and time. ?That?s the whole point of observing the solstice at Jantar Mantar. It?s the one astronomical observatory that is accessible to everyone. The entire phenomena can be explained here, without having to resort to a specialised observatory,? said Anurag Garg, educator at the planetarium. The crowd seemed to agree. At the ?Ram Yantra,? a large bowl to track and view heavenly bodies, a team of volunteers traced the path of the Sun, as it moved the farthest away from the equator and reached the Tropic of Capricorn. The crowd even learnt how to use the instruments to measure time. ?Every plank in this instrument represents an hours, you see where the shadow is falling, measure it relative to the plank and you have the time of the day,? he added. Even as the crowds watched, the volunteers calculated time to within one minute and thirty seconds of the IST. It wasn?t all astronomy though, the solstice even has a place in culture. Like a spinning top, the earth?s axis also wobbles. Over time, this wobble has changed the stars that are visible during a particular time in the night. ?During the solstice, the sun is supposed to be in the constellation of Capricorn, that?s why the tropic is called so. Yet now, with the change in the axis, this doesn?t happen any more,? explained Rathnasree. In India, however, we still celebrate when the sun passes into the constellation of Capricorn on makar sankranti. ?Around 1,500 years ago, it would have been a celebration of the solstice,? she added. For the crowds, the solstice also brought out the need to renovate the Jantar Mantar. ?The Samrat Yantra is the world?s second biggest sundial. People think that it is just another monument. If we could explain to them how to calculate time with it and place a standard clock near it, they would appreciate the understanding of astronomy we had as far back as 1724,? Rathnasree added. 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