Welcome to Rolf Wahl Olsen's astrophotography galleries of the beautiful Southern skies, taken from my observatory in Auckland, New Zealand.
I enjoy taking images that are unusual, either being of a rarely imaged object, or perhaps a familiar object presented in a new way. Among my images you will find exotic objects like the circumstellar disc of Beta Pictoris, gravitational lenses, quasars, distant galaxy clusters, extragalactic globulars, and even the Cosmic Web itself. I find that these obscure targets often have a very interesting story to tell.
I have several novel achievements in amateur astronomy, including imaging the circumstellar disc of Beta Pictoris, the first optical detection of the Southern jet in Centaurus A, light echoes from both SN1987A and the Great Eta Carinae Eruption, and have also received numerous competition awards and APOD’s.
I have been interested in astronomy for as long as I can remember and have observed the night sky visually for decades with both binoculars and telescopes. In 1990 I got my first telescope, a 60mm alt-az refractor. A couple of years later I upgraded to a 100mm refractor on an equatorial mount and in 1995 I got a 10-inch f/5 Newtonian reflector. This telescope was used extensively for both planetary and deep sky observing and in 2003 I ventured into the world of astrophotography and began taking images with a long-exposure modified webcam. In 2011 I built a Serrurier truss 12.5-inch f/4 Newtonian and then upgraded the webcam to a highly sensitive QSI683wsg CCD camera which I now use to take all my images.
The modified webcam was a great opportunity to learn as it required me to develop sophisticated processing skills to achieve good results. It also forced me to think carefully about my choice of subjects, given the webcam’s limited resolution and low sensitivity. My images taken with the CCD camera greatly benefited from these early learnings.
If you would like to use any of these images please contact me and ask for my permission first.
Website
http://www.rolfolsenastrophotography.com/
