From CanaaniteSonora, astronomers and astrophysicists decipher the cosmos through the light of each celestial object. For 37 years, the Guillermo Haro Observatory It has been a spearhead in the country for research into x-rays and gamma rays, as well as the formation of new stars, novae and supernovae.
Sergio Noriega, delegate of the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronicsshared in an interview with EL DEBATE that the site has a 2.1m diameter telescope, with a Ritchey-Chrétien type optical design.
In addition, Sergio Noriega shared that the spectrograph is used to analyze the physical and chemical properties of celestial objects, such as the taxonomic classification of asteroids.
This is one of the most important observatories in Latin America, which was even created in Mexico.
What kind of telescope do they have?
He Mariquita Sierra Astronomical Observatory It is an optical telescope measuring two meters and ten centimeters in diameter, located at 2,470 meters above sea level. It works with an equatorial mount and a dome that moves automatically to follow objects in the sky. The Sierra La Mariquita was chosen because it is a very transparent region, it is a strip of land that has its own characteristics. It all began in the seventies, when the Institute received the glass to make the mirror from the University of Arizona.
At that time, Guillermo Haro was the director of the institute, a great fan of astronomy, although he was actually a lawyer. The mechanical part was built in a shipyard in Italy and in Holland. The mirror was completely polished in the INAOEin Puebla. It is a mirror of two meters and ten centimeters in diameter, which, you could say, is one of the largest in Latin America. And In Mexico we have two telescopesOne is in San Pedro Mártir, in Baja California, which is operated by UNAM and the other in Cananea, operated by INAOE.
How does it work?
The telescope is called optical.. It is different from a radio telescope, because here there are radio signals, simply. Depending on the instrument that is placed, you can see from ultraviolet to infrared. It depends on, let’s say, the research project that you want to analyze. Because what we record is light, we see the light that reaches us from an object in the sky. It doesn’t matter how far away it is or what shape it has, we simply need its light. That is the light that we record, just as you have been able to observe here, because it contains all the information that is required to interpret the physics of that object.
This allows us to interpret whether the object is massive, what its temperature is, whether it is moving at high speeds, whether it is in a magnetic field, an electric field, whether it is being attracted by another object, whether it is spinning. All this information is transmitted through light.
How does the telescope dome work?
We called the telescope a equatorial mountThere are two main types of mechanical structures, one is the Tazimud and the other is the equatorial. In our case, it is an equatorial mount. The advantage of this is that to observe the object, we only move one axis. We set the north-south axis, and the other is a tracking that we do only on one axis to follow the object. That is why we have two axes. One that we call right ascension and the other declination. Then, the telescope is covered by a dome, which through automation, we call the Tazimud coordinate, which is basically the degree measured from the north, how many degrees you see on the horizon. Simply that dome follows the movement of the telescope and places the window to be able to continue capturing that bright light from the object.
What research is done with this telescope?
Those interested in using this telescope are in the area of astrophysics. It is any researcher who is interested in know how the cosmos, that is, the universe, works. For this, they need our instrument to make measurements and thus interpret the information that reaches the stars. Any researcher who has this interest can submit a research project to the INAOE, in which he proposes what type of research he will carry out. He also programs what time of year the object will be in the sky. Based on that, an observation time is assigned, which can be one week, two weeks, or a month. It depends on the type of research they want to carry out, because sometimes, with many investigations, with just one night they can already have something, but there are others that require months or years. There is a follow-up that is sometimes done for years. “Any researcher from a university or an institute, whether from Mexico or abroad, can request that observation time in the sky of the cosmos.
What is the importance of this telescope in Latin America?
In Latin America we have one of the telescopes where they are carried out scientific research programsIn Chile, the European community has installed its telescopes there. But yes, they are much larger than ours. But, basically, they are not part of the country where they are installed, but rather they are regions. And this one is not, this one is completely Mexican, managed and built by Mexicans. We can say that at the level of institutions in America, well, we would be the first places to have an instrument like this.
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