Planet's birth

First sight of a planet being born

For the first time, astronomers have observed the birth of a giant planet. The newborn, called PDS 70b, can be seen directly in images taken using the SPHERE camera on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. Although PDS 70b is 113 parsecs (370 light years) away, astronomers can tell that it is bigger than Jupiter, orbits as far from its sun as Uranus does from ours and is probably covered in clouds of some kind.

Bad Astronomy blog | 9 min read