Observe 90 years of traveling at the Zeiss telescope at the Bosscha Observatory

Liputan6.com, Bandung – At the beginning of the 20th century, astronomers began to realize that stars were linked together to form galactic systems.

If previously large telescopes were concentrated only in the northern hemisphere, especially in Europe and North America, the desire of experts to research and understand the structure of galaxies has led to the construction of large telescopes in the southern hemisphere.

One of them is the Zeiss double refractor telescope, which is located at the Bosscha Observatory, in Lembang, in West Bandung Regency.

The double reflector binoculars of 11 meters and a diameter of 60 centimeters weighing 17 tons were ordered from the famous German optical company Carl Zeiss Jena.

Built in 1928, the object of observation was in a round twin house with a domed top 14.5 meters in diameter. The dome building was designed by the architect C. P. Wolf Schoemacher.

The Zeiss binoculars have helped enormously to reveal the inaccessible sides of the universe from Earth. Over the past 90 years, humans have been fortunate to see how beautiful the universe is from the eyes in space.

According to Yatny Yulianty, a staff researcher at the Bosscha Observatory, the 60-centimeter Zeiss binoculars are currently the largest and oldest telescopes of the Bosscha Observatory. Despite its 90 years, the telescope still works and is very well maintained.

"Between the years 1920 and 2013, a lot of data was generated from research done using Zeiss binoculars," Yatny said. Liputan6.comTuesday (27/11/2018).

The Bossiss Observatory Zeiss telescope had used the photographic detection system until the 1980s. But since the early 1990s, the technology of digital detectors using astronomical CCD sensors began to be used at Bosscha in order to increase the level of sensitivity of the observation. In addition, the instrumentation of the telescope also continues to be modernized.

Yatny revealed that research using the Zeiss telescope would continue to be conducted and aimed at producing lenses useful for human life that could not be separated from the solar system.

One of them, observing the much weaker stars in the light, is about 100,000 times weaker than the stars visible to the naked eye.

In addition, Zeiss binoculars are also specialized in observing certain celestial objects, such as double visual stars. Until now, there is a collection of tens of thousands of double-star visual observation data obtained using the Zeiss telescope.

"More specifically, in relation to the search for double stars treated in this way, the observation data can describe a complete orbital motion," he said.

According to him, research on orbital movements play an important role in the development of astronomy. Because, from the shape of the orbit of the two stars, the observations will be compared to the results of theoretical calculations. In the end, it will be very useful to estimate the mbad value of a star.

"If the research on the mbades can be revealed, it will respond to the evolution of the stars.After the evolution of the stars, we can know the sun and so on.C is the function of the research, "said Yatny.