An observatory in northern Chile has received a spectacular view of Messier 83, also known as the Spiral of the Southern Pinwheel.
Messier 83 is an almost perfect picture of how a spinning galaxy is supposed to look stereotypically. This is because we are fortunate to see it from an overhead, or face-to-face, perspective that is absolutely perfect.
The new image was obtained with the dark energy camera (DECam) attached to the Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in northern Chile. DECam, already performed its main function as an Dark Energy Study from 2013 to 2018, now used for other purposes, such as observing celestial wonders nearby.
Messier 83 is 15 million light-years away, which is very close in terms of neighboring galaxies. The spin is about 50,000 light-years in diameter, making it about two-fifths the size of our Milky Way, another spinning galaxy. The South Pinwheel, as it is also known, “probably gives a good idea of what our Military Way would look like to a distant alien civilization,” according to to the U.S. National Science Foundations NOIRLab, which manages the CTIO program.
Six aotrom there were filters used for the image, all illuminating certain features within the galaxy. For example, the dark channels that pass through the spirals are large accumulations of dust, although the red spots are hydrogen-rich regions, in which new stars are born. In total, the image is the result of 163 DECam exposures transmitted over 11.3 hours of observation time.
For those who want to make this image your wallpaper, go for it here to download the version of your choice.
Work done with DECam will inform future ideas Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which should see its first light later this year and be fully operational in 2023.
“The Messier 83 observations are part of an ongoing program to provide an atlas of temporal variations in nearby southern galleries in preparation for the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Space and Time Study,” said Monika Soraisam, astronaut at the University of Illinois and lead investigator for DECam’s comments on Messier 83, outlined in a NOIRLab statement.
Surprisingly, the Rubin Observatory captures 1,000 images per night, which it does continuously for a full decade. So get ready for the next amazing chapter in astronomy, as scientists literally create a color-shifting image of the cosmos.