How cool is this!

[blackspade]

http://news.yahoo.com/formation-alien-worlds-photographed-1st-time-182321507.html

For the first time ever, astronomers have directly observed planets in the process of being born.

Scientists have photographed a gas-giant exoplanet forming around a young star called LkCa 15, which lies about 450 light-years from Earth.

"It's exciting, because it's the first time that we've been able to image forming planets directly," study lead author Stephanie Sallum, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. "It gives us a system to follow up in the future, in depth, to really understand the details of how planets form." [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The LkCa 15 system features a large disk of dust and gas surrounding a sunlike star that's just 2 million years old. Such circumstellar disks commonly surround newborn stars, providing the raw materials from which planets form.

[Sherman A1]

1. Cool!

Thanks for sharing!