Astronomers have captured images of a young star system in the earliest stages of planet formation.

Researchers in 2014 used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to image the star HL Tau and its dusty disk, some 138 parsecs (450 light years) from Earth. They found distinct gaps in the disk, where developing planets were thought to be collecting material along their orbits as they grew. To study the system further, Carlos Carrasco-González of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Morelia and his colleagues used the Very Large Array in New Mexico, which is more sensitive to the disk's inner region than ALMA. It revealed that part of the innermost ring of dust seems to be clumping together into a planet that is 3–8 times the mass of Earth, suggesting that planets are forming in the rings rather than in the gaps.

This is the first time that planetary formation has been observed at such an early stage, the authors say.

Astrophys. J. Lett. in the press; preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.03731 (2016)