--- title: "Beautiful Images Show Planets Starting to Form" description: "An team of astronomers has managed to take some extremely rare images of the process of planetary systems being born hundreds of light-years away." date: "2020-05-01" modified: "2020-05-01" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/images-show-planets-form" categories: - "Science & Energy" tags: - "new planet" - "planetary system" --- # Beautiful Images Show Planets Starting to Form ![]() *\Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech\* An international team of astronomers has managed to capture some extraordinarily rare images of planetary systems being born, hundreds of light-years away. While we've seen images of "protoplanetary disks" before, we've never seen the process captured in such detail. ![An team of astronomers has managed to take some extremely rare images of the process of planetary systems being born hundreds of light-years away.]() *Kluska et al.* "In \[earlier\] pictures, the regions close to the star, where rocky planets form, are covered by only few pixels," lead author Jacques Kluska, from KU Leuven in Belgium, said in [a statement](). The images show the inner areas around young stars where planets start taking shape, accumulating matter from dust and gas. Dust grains build up into larger rocks, some of which eventually grow into entire rocky planets. "We needed to visualize these details to be able to identify patterns that might betray planet formation and to characterize the properties of the disks," Kluska said. The researchers had to use a relatively new imaging technique called infrared interferometry at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile to capture the images. The technique doesn't produce an image directly. Using mathematical models — not unlike the way the [first-ever images of a black hole]() were created — the team was able to separate the disks from the light emitted by the star itself. The level of detail of the new images is astonishing. "Distinguishing details at the scale of the orbits of rocky planets like Earth or Jupiter (as you can see in the images) — a fraction of the Earth-Sun distance — is equivalent to being able to see a human on the Moon, or to distinguish a hair at a 10 km distance," Jean-Philippe Berger, principal investigator from the Université Grenoble-Alpes, France, explained in the statement. So what did they end up seeing in the new images? Brighter and darker spots of light could be a sign that "there could be instabilities in the disk that can lead to vortices where the disk accumulates grains of space dust that can grow and evolve into a planet," according to Kluska. **READ MORE:** [The Before Times of a Solar System]() \[*The Atlantic*\] **More on planetary formation:** *[STAR BLASTS OWN PLANETS INTO SHATTERED CORPSES, DEVOURS REMAINS]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()