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Astronomers capture amazing images of a planet being born for the very first time

Astronomers have captured the first ever image of a newborn planet that is still forming in our galaxy.

The amazing images of the planet, known as PDS 70b, were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

It is the first time astronomers have caught an image of a baby planet as it plots a path through a disc of dust surrounding its star – 370 light-years away from Earth.

The newborn planet, PDS 70b, is captured on camera (Picture: ESO/A Muller et al)
The newborn planet, PDS 70b, is captured on camera (Picture: ESO/A Muller et al)

Researchers have long suspected the existence of the planet in orbit around the star PDS 70, but now they have the proof.

Planet formation had previously been hidden from the human eye by dust, but a team at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy grabbed a clear image of the planet breaking through the disc from which it forms.

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In the images, the newborn planet rips through the material surrounding the star.

The planet is about 3 billion km from the central star – roughly the same distance between Uranus and the Sun.

“These discs around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them,” said research leader Miriam Keppler.

“The problem is that until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been features in the disc.”

André Müller, leader of the second team to examine the young planet, said: “Keppler’s results give us a new window onto the complex and poorly-understood early stages of planetary evolution.

“We needed to observe a planet in a young star’s disc to really understand the processes behind planet formation.”

The discovery by the two teams of researchers was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics on Monday.