Incredible images were captured by astronomers from the moment of the birth of a distant planet.

The planet revolves around by the HD Star 135344Bwhich is about 440 years of light from Earth.

The striking snapshots show the planet slowly created by a mixture of rotating powder and gases.

The scientists who made this discovery reported that the planet appears to be twice the size of Jupiter and is away from the star the same distance as that of Neptune from the sun.

The planets are born around young stars, in huge gas and dust discs. There, tiny particles collide and unite, forming larger bodies that over time evolve into planetary and then on planets. The whole process takes millions of years until stable planetary systems are created.

The leader writer Francesco Maiodoctoral researcher at the University of Florence, he says: “We will never become witnesses of Earth formation, but now, around a young star 440 light years away, we watch a planet create in real time“

How did they find the newborn planet

On the protagonist disc of the HD 135344B star, astronomers had already observed rotating spiral arms, through previous observations with the SPHERE instrument, which is mounted on the Very big telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). However, none of these studies had identified clear evidence of the presence of a planet formed on the disc.

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Now, thanks to new observations with the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, researchers believe that they have found the “suspect” responsible for the formation of spiral structures. The prospective planet was located right at the base of one of the spiral arms, where, according to the theoretical models, a developing planetary body would accumulate material from the disc and, as it wanders around the star, would create the characteristic spiral patterns.

These observations could shed light on how the planets were formed on our own solar system four billion years ago.