Astronomers have long believed that they knew how planets were formed, but now they think they’ve spotted one being born far out in space.
In the constellation of Auriga, a star system that’s easily spotted from Earth during the autumn and winter, lies a young star called AB Aurigae.
The star, some 530 light-years from Earth, is surrounded by a spiral cloud of dust and gas. This spiral gas cloud is marked by a “twist” that, scientists say, marks the spot where a planet is starting to form.
The twist is about as far from AB Aurigae as the planet Neptune is from our own Sun. Planet formation is thought to take place in the first million years of a planetary system’s existence, so the entire star system is likely to be much younger than our
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