From service to citizens under observation to twice participating in the Astronomy Olympiad, Ferdinand now carries a bronze medal from Poland

TIME.CO, Jakarta – Jakarta Amateur Astronomy Association celebrates in honor of a member of its sister organization, Student Forum Astronomy (FPA) won the event Olympic international. Five students are set to represent Indonesia at the 2023 International Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) Olympiad.

The Indonesian team will take part in the 16th IOAA offline from August 10 to 20, 2023 in Chorzów, Poland. The top five selected students were Dzaky Rafiansyah (Central Java Semesta High School), Zahran Nizar Fadhlan (SMAN 1 Padang West Sumatra), Bryan Herdianto (Canisius High School DKI Jakarta), Ferdinand (BPK PENABUR DKI Jakarta 1 Christian High School) and Indra Rhamadan (SMAN 1 Bangka Belitung Manggar Islands).

Officially, the Indonesian government through the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology has not announced the good news of this team to the public. However, the photos from the victory have gone missing.

“Congratulations Ferdinand,” HAAJ chief Ananda Reza Kurniawan wrote on his Instagram account on Sunday, August 20, 2022. Ferdinand is said to have won the bronze.

I didn’t expect to win

Time he once interviewed Ferdinand while he was on telescope watch during the solar eclipse in April 2023 at Taman Ismail Marzuki. “Indonesia got 1 silver and 4 bronzes,” Ferdinand said of the team’s result Time.

According to Ferdinand, the National Training Center’s coaches and mentors are all about earning medals. But he didn’t expect to win,

“I’m very grateful, especially since I didn’t win last year and I’m very thankful for this gift from God,” Ferdinando said of his second international Olympics participation.

As for the questions he was faced with, according to Ferdinand, they were very difficult and made him less confident in answering. He explained various problems such as the theory of observational data analysis and the planetarium.

There are also group competitions. Meanwhile there is no practice of looking at the stars directly in the sky. The observations were not made in real terms, i.e. the practice of viewing stars from a screen.

According to Ferdinand, the hardest type of question is observation because this year the questions were unexpected because they weren’t asked at night.

Love astronomy

Announcement

Ferdinand explained his reasons for loving astronomy. According to him, astronomy allows people to learn more about God’s creation outside the Earth. “And the most interesting thing is that everything is neat and beautiful and can also be explained with equations,” he said.

He admits that he started studying for the Astronomy Olympiad from grade 9. Ferdinand is a silver medalist at the 2021 National Astronomy Science Olympiad. He is also part of the Indonesian team at the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in Georgia, USA, which will be held online in 2022. And this was the second international olympiad in which he participated. He again took part in the selection at the national training center until he graduated.

Now, at the time of the match, Ferdinand had just graduated and been accepted into astrophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Regarding the victory date which is close to Independence Day, he sent a message to the other young people: “Continue with the enthusiasm for independence. Never give up and rely on God in every matter”.

Bronze medal victory

Another participant from Jakarta also won a bronze medal namely Bryan Herdianto of SMAS Kanisius DKI Jakarta. Just like Ferdinand, he too did not expect to win.

The questions Bryan found difficult made him lose confidence in himself. “However, thank God we can get a medal,” he said Time.

According to Bryan the hardest part was also the observation. This is because the observations appear to raise very different questions than in previous years.

“His observations didn’t see stars in the night sky, but they did see bright images placed in a dark room,” Bryan said. The existence of this method makes the questions raised more varied.

Editors Choice: 5 students ready to represent Indonesia at the 2023 Astronomy Olympiad in Poland