Astronomical significance of Makara Sankranti

Festivals were a very exciting part of life as I grew up (some of my friends doubt if I have ) . Other than the mandatory waking up early which was a problem, the excitement and sumptuous food made me look forward to festivals every year. But it was difficult for a young lad to plan for festivals. They seemed to occur on different dates of the calendar – Sometimes in August, sometimes in September and always on different dates. How was a kid to plan his fun calendar? Yet, amongst all these festivals, one festival – Sankranti was always punctual. It would always occur in January and the dates were either 14th or 15th. It looked like a decent chap among all the unpredictable other festivals.

What makes this festival somehow align itself to the English calendar than the Indian Panchanga?

While looking for an answer to this mystery, I found out a lot more about this festival and here is all I found.

Most of our festivals are related to when a specific star or group of stars rise in the morning. For example festivals like Vinayak Chaturthi, Rishi Panchami are all related to stars associated with Ganesha and the Saptarshis respectively. Dattatreya Jayanti occurs on the day when the stars of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva align on a straight line with sunrise. I will talk more in detail on this aspect in a later blog.

Makara Sankranti however linked to sun rising in the zodiac constellation Capricorn. As the earth revolves around the sun with the background of all the stars, the sun rises with a slightly different stellar background than the previous day. The 360 degrees of space in the plane of the solar system is divided into 12 groups of stars and these form the zodiac. So, roughly every month, sun rises in a different sign. On Jan 14, the sun stars to rise in the sign of Capricorn. As this is linked to sun’s time-table, it occurs regularly on the English Calendar.

What is so important of Makara Sankranti ?

The flash above shows the sunrise directions on the 14th of Jan, Feb through May. In the image we are looking towards East and North is on our left. As can be seen, the rising point of sun moves towards north during these months and this movement starts from this day. Hence the period of six months when the sun moves from South to North is called Uttarayana.

As the universe expands, the sun with all his planets and their satellites is moving northward. This motion is towars the star Vega (The star Abhijit  in Vedic list). This was observed by the Vedic seers. The apparent movement of sun towards north during Uttarayana is hence considered to be in alignment with the actual northward movement towards Vega. Hence, they considered this to be forward looking and auspicious time.

Wish you all a happy Makara Sankranti !