Stunning images of swirling gas and dust can show the formation of a planet!

For the first time, astronomers may have seen direct evidence of planet formation around a young star. A spiral disk of gas and dust surrounding the star AB Aurigae contains a small S-shaped gyre near the center of the spiral, infrared telescope images show.

Previously, astronomers have seen large-scale gaps and spirals thought to be created by unseen planets in disks of gas and dust around young stars. Theories of how planets stick together and gather material from these disks predict that the planets’ motions would further spin the gas around them like swirling skirts, pinpointing a planet’s location.

Now, astronomers have used infrared observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the Very Large Telescope, both in Chile, to find a spiral and zero in on one of those S-shaped gyrations around AB Aurigae.

The star, some 520 light-years away in the constellation Auriga, is only 4 million years old, about a thousandth the age of the sun. The exact mass of the potential planet is unknown, but it would probably have to be a gas giant like Jupiter rather than a rocky planet like Earth to generate such large ripples in the disk, and it may not be alone: there is a hint of another planet near the outer edge of the disk.