The next Colloquium of the Astronomical Observatory will be held on Wednesday, September 23, at 1 PM in the Library.
Speaker: Tuğba Erol, PhD student at the Erciyes University in Kayseri (Turkey).
Topic: Analysis of the NGC 6020 Shell Galaxy Using the Milanković Telescope
Resume:
Objective: The shells surrounding galaxies are structures that typically take the form of concentric arcs and have low surface brightness. Deep observations are required to study these faint structures in detail. Although galaxy observations from many telescopes that provide publicly available data exist, these archival data do not provide sufficient depth for a precise shell analysis. To overcome this limitation, a deep observation of the NGC 6020 shell galaxy was made using the Milanković Telescope and shell analysis was performed.
Method: An observation lasting approximately 9 hours was made using the 1.4 meter Milanković Telescope. These photometric observations, performed on May 5–6, 2024, and April 29, 2025, used the L filter. Data from the NGC 6020 shell galaxy was reduced using classical image processing techniques.
Results: Following the reduction of the observational data, the model we developed for shell detection and analysis was applied to the NGC 6020 galaxy. The analysis determined structural parameters such as the number of shells in the galaxy, their distances from the center, and the number of generations in the galaxy, as well as the lower limit of the system's merger time. Furthermore, the galaxy's stellar mass was calculated and presented using a new method we applied during the analysis process.
