Srinivasa Ramanujan was ‘discovered’ twice in the 20th century. The first was when English mathematician G.H. Hardy ‘discovered’ the genius mathematician in 1914; and the second was when Indian astronomers in India, led by R. Rajamohan, discovered an asteroid that was later named 4130 Ramanujan. It was the first time in 104 years that asteroids were discovered from India. Their instrument, the 45-cm Schmidt telescope, was housed on the Javadi hills in Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.
This spot is today the Vainu Bappu Observatory and is run by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, and is among India's foremost observatories. It was chosen in the 1960s because it was an impressive 750 metres above sea level, located amid a forest and offered fairly unobstructed vistas of the night sky.
But this wasn’t ideal. Kavalur’s geography put it in the path of both monsoonal clouds, during June-September and the returning, or northeast, monsoon in November, forcing the observatory to often shut down for months. Rainclouds absorb starlight and radiation from cosmic objects, preventing them from being caught on the telescopes of cameras. So IIA scientists began their search in the early 1980s for a place least affected by the monsoon.
