Jakarta –
The National Observatory Management Agency (BPON) in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT), managed to capture the sighting of the “South Windmill Galaxy”. BPON does have some fruits telescope which can be used for research and astrophotographers.
For both purposes, these telescopes must at least have good pointing and tracking capabilities. Thus, observations of certain dim targets can be carried out for a long time to obtain the desired information.
As explained by the Coordinator of BPON Kupang, Abdul Rachman, the image shown is a comparison between a black and white image (in the background) and a color image (in the foreground) which also includes a galaxy called M83.
Black and white image taken at BPON using telescope Takahashi refractor is 106 mm in diameter with a focal length of 530 mm. The telescope mount uses the German equatorial type.
“As for recording the image, a CCD camera with a resolution of 3326×2504 pixels is used. The technique used to obtain this image is quite simple. After the telescope is aimed precisely at the target, namely M83, the mount is adjusted so that the telescope continues to follow the target so that M83 and other stars remain in their place. in the same position in the image that was recorded for 10 minutes,” he explained as quoted from the Space Science Education site.
In addition, color images are taken from https://www.patrikphoto.com/m83_en/. To obtain it, in addition to better pointing and tracking capabilities, it also requires more complete equipment and a longer and more complicated process.
The image was obtained using a telescope that is larger in size and focal length than that used in BPON. In addition, the tool is also equipped with an astronomical filter to be able to produce a variety of colors. The total shooting time using 4 filters took 6 hours 16 minutes. After data acquisition, the process is continued with data processing using several image processing software which of course requires its own knowledge and a lot of patience.
“The investment spent is proportional to the results that we can see in the comparison image. However, this simple black and white image can also provide astronomical information. We can clearly see that M83 is a spiral galaxy that has a bar in the middle ,” he said.
M83 or Messier 83 in full is also known as the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy or the Southern Windmill Galaxy and NGC 5236. The distance is estimated to be about 15 million light years. Seen from Earth, M83 is in the constellation Hydra. M83 is much smaller than the Milky Way Galaxy. But it produces stars at a faster rate. The pink dots in the color image are locations where new stars are born.
“Telescope in BPON can also produce color images. This time, we deliberately took a black and white image to show that even with simpler tools and techniques, certain astronomical information can actually be obtained,” concluded Abdul Rachman.
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