Euphoria on solar eclipse that occurred on March 9, 2016 yesterday was also felt by academicians Universitas Brawijaya (UB). Astrophotography Team UB, led by Rudy Yuwono ST MSc, has prepared his team in order to not to miss capturing this rare phenomenon.
“We’ve set up two telescopes, which will be installed at two points in UB, in Masjid Raden Patah UB, and UB Engineering Faculty rooftop,” said Rudy who also is the Head of Public Relation FT-UB met at his office on Tuesday, March 8, 2016.
Two telescopes used are refractor types, LOSMANDY, the same telescope used by Thierry Legault, a world-class French astro-photographer who had received awards from NASA USA. This telescope which has owned since 2014 will capture solar eclipse moment and the image captured will be directly transformed into visual data on a computer using Stellarium software.
By using stellarium, Rudy and Afandy Yusuf from Physic Astronomy Club (APC) held a simulation before the d-day.
“The eclipse which will appear in Malang about 80%, we’ve already conducted a simulation using Stellarium, we count roughly, the eclipse will happen for about two hours,” explain Afandi when interviewed in the FT-UB rooftop while preparing the telescope.
Solar eclipse in Malang and its surrounding area start at about 6:21. The peak of the eclipse, when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth in an alignment, happen around 07.25. While the eclipse end around 8:38. Thus, the time duration of the eclipse was not just a couple of minutes like most people think, but for 2 hours 17 minutes. (mic/Humas UB)
Astrophotography team that observed from FT-UB rooftop captured this rare moment into some picture below:
