First Amateur Image Of Another Solar System Captured

by Steven Walsh

Just recently an astronomer in New Zealand claims to have captured the first amateur pictures of another solar system from a tiny telescope in his back yard.

Rolf Olsen, a New Zealand-based astrophotographer, has published the first non-professional pictures of the disk of debris and dust swirling around Beta Pictoris, a very young solar system.

Incredibly, the 12 million-year-old system, some 60 million light years away from our own, was captured with only a 25cm telescope, a newspaper reported.

The material that forms the proto-planetary disc around Beta Pictoris has been photographed by large observatories before, but it was not thought possible for amateurs to take a picture of the system, due to the glare from the star itself.

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