Amateur' Astronomer Snaps Pic of Planet-Forming Disk

This is truly astonishing: an “amateur” astronomer in New Zealand, Rolf Olsen, has for the first time actually been able to get a direct photograph of the disk of swirling material forming a planet around a nearby star!




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and with a 10" telescope,... thats impressive!

I found some pretty cool pics of the debris disk

hm, i wonder how common these discs are, i recall reading about one years ago that was discovered around the bright star Fomalhaut and more recently Vega. Yes the beta Pictoris one is a good example i think. I've not done any Astronomy in years, i used to have a telescope as a kid, often thought about taking it up again, there's so much stuff to see out there.

Problem for me is i'm in a bad spot, too much light pollution from street lamps it wouldn't be worth me investing in a good telescope unless i travelled way out somewhere where it's dark.

reply to post by FLaKK


Well considering the vast amount of well..everything out there, it's probably very common!

I wonder how many people would mistake this for a UFO

reply to post by muse7


I wonder how many people mistake you for a troll???

Originally posted by muse7
I wonder how many people would mistake this for a UFO

I truly doubt it, considering that to the naked eye it looks just like a medium-to-dim star, just like a couple thousand other stars in the night sky.

I doubt it if most people even notice β Pic (Beta Pictoris) at all, unless they look right at it. It's extremely unremarkable, as naked-eye stars go.

Yea there is a disc around the bright star Vega also,

debris disc