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WOW! Who needs a huge observatory instrument to take amazing astrophotos? Not Rolf Olsen of New Zealand, for one. Behold, the first amateur photo of a protoplanetary disc around another star:
Click the image to see Olsen's page about this project.
The dashed line indicates the plane of the solar-system disc, almost edge-on from our Earthly perspective. For comparison, here's an image of Beta Pictoris as taken by the professional observatory at Las Campanas (note that it's rotated 90° from Olsen's photo):
Click the image to see the Daily Mail story.
These photos show the protoplanetary disc of gas, dust, and rock orbiting the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away from Earth. This very young solar system is only about 12 million years old and shows how our own Solar System looked 4.5 billion years ago.
( How did he do it? Here's the full discussion, under the cut. )
And that's it! Oh, and did I mention that Olsen only uses a 10" f/5 Newtonian telescope with a modified Philips ToUCam Pro webcam? Whoah. Oh, and he built the truss-tube setup himself. This guy is my hero:
Click the image to see the full description of the telescope and construction photos.
Let this be an inspiration to the budding astrophotographer in you!
Chris
Click the image to see Olsen's page about this project.
The dashed line indicates the plane of the solar-system disc, almost edge-on from our Earthly perspective. For comparison, here's an image of Beta Pictoris as taken by the professional observatory at Las Campanas (note that it's rotated 90° from Olsen's photo):
Click the image to see the Daily Mail story.
These photos show the protoplanetary disc of gas, dust, and rock orbiting the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away from Earth. This very young solar system is only about 12 million years old and shows how our own Solar System looked 4.5 billion years ago.
( How did he do it? Here's the full discussion, under the cut. )
And that's it! Oh, and did I mention that Olsen only uses a 10" f/5 Newtonian telescope with a modified Philips ToUCam Pro webcam? Whoah. Oh, and he built the truss-tube setup himself. This guy is my hero:
Click the image to see the full description of the telescope and construction photos.
Let this be an inspiration to the budding astrophotographer in you!
Chris
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