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An observatory in northern Chile has captured a stunning view of Messier 83, also known as the Spiral of the Southern Pinwheel.
Messier 83 is an almost perfect illustration of what a spiral galaxy is stereotypically supposed to look like. This is because we have the chance to see it from a virtually perfect point of view, or face to face.
The new image was acquired 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, having already completed his primary duty as the Dark Energy Investigation from 2013 to 2018, is now used for other purposes, such as gazing at nearby celestial wonders.
Messier 83 is 15 million light-years away, which is actually pretty close when it comes to neighboring galaxies. The spiral is about 50,000 light years in diameter, making it about two-fifths the size of our Milky Way, another spiral galaxy. The Southern Windmill, as it is also called, “probably gives a good approximation of how our Milky Way would look like a distant alien civilization.” according to at the US National Science Foundation NOIRLab, which manages the CTIO program.
Six light the filters were used to do the image, all highlighting specific features of the galaxy. For example, the dark channels running through the spirals are large accumulations of dust, while the red dots are regions rich in hydrogen gas, within which new stars are born. In total, the image is the product of 163 DECam exposures taken over 11.3 hours of observation.
For those of you who wish to make this image your wallpaper, go Here to download the version of your choice.
The work done with DECam will inform future observations made by the new The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is slated to open later this year and become fully operational in 2023.
“The Messier 83 observations are part of an ongoing program to produce an atlas of time varying phenomena in neighboring southern galaxies in preparation for the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time”, Monika Soraisam , astronomer at the University of Illinois and principal investigator for the DECam observations on Messier 83, explained in the NOIRLab statement.
Incredibly, the Rubin Observatory will capture 1,000 images every night, which it will do continuously for an entire decade. So get ready for the next amazing chapter in astronomy, as scientists literally create a color film of the cosmos.
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