First Images Released of Planet Being Born

Hawaii astronomers will now hold the trump card for the next time everybody's showing off their baby photos.

Astronomers in Hawaii have discovered what they believe to be a planet forming before their very eyes, the first time a planet so young has ever been seen. The planet, named LkCa 15b, is in the, well, LkCa 15 system, some 450 light years away. The researchers at the University of Hawaii's Keck Observatory have images of what they say is matter accumulating around a planet-like figure that's rotating around a relatively young star, at just two million years old. LkCa 15b will be a gas giant about the size of Jupiter. They hope that continued study of the birth of the planet – and maybe even of a full-fledged solar system – could glean insights into how planets in our solar system were first created.

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