The Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-m telescope at the Inter-American Observatory Cerro Tololo produced a spectacularly detailed image of the barred spiral system Messier 83.
This DECam image shows Messier 83, a beautiful, spiral galaxy located approximately 15 million light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra. Its spiral arms are lined with dark dust webs and peppered with reddish, star-forming clouds of hydrogen gas. Image Credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA / M. Soraisam, University of Illinois / Travis Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage / Mahdi Zamani & Davide de Martin.
Messier 83 lives about 15 million light-years away in the southern constellation of Hydra.
This galaxy, discovered in 1752, is so oriented that it can be seen almost entirely from Earth, which means that astronomers can observe the spiral structure in fantastic detail.
It is also known as M83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy or NGC 5236, and has a diameter of about 50,000 light-years, so it is a bit diminutive compared to our own Milky Way.
Messier 83 is a prominent member of a group of galaxies known as the Centaurus A / M83 group, which also includes the dusty NGC 5128 and the irregular galaxy NGC 5253.
To create a spectacular new view of the galaxy, dr. Monika Soraisam of the University of Illinois and colleagues used six different filters on DECam.
With filters, astronomers can choose in which wavelengths they want to see the sky. This is crucial for scientific observations, when astronomers need very specific information about an object, but it also allows for colorful images like these.
If you observe celestial objects with different filters, you can choose different details.
The dark tendrils curled by Messier 83, for example, are dust webs and block the light.
In contrast, the clustered, bright red spots are caused by glowing, hot hydrogen gas, which identifies them as pivot points of star formation.
Dusty spores and dynamic ionized gas have different temperatures and are therefore visible in different wavelengths.
With filters, both can be observed separately and then merged into one complex image.
A total of 163 DECam exposures, with a total combined exposure time of more than 11.3 hours, created this portrait of Messier 83.
“The Messier 83 observations are part of an ongoing program to produce an atlas of various phenomena in nearby southern galaxies in preparation for the Rubin Observatory’s Legin Survey of Space and Time,” said Dr. Soraisam said.