ESO observation thought to show the birth of a giant planet
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An artist's impression of the gas giant planet thought to be forming in the orbit of young star HD 100546 (Image:ESO)
Images of the gas and dust surrounding HD 100546, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the NACO system on the ESO's VLT (right) (Image:ESO)
The NACO image was taken using a special coronagraph that suppresses the light from the star, allowing the region to be observed in greater detail (Image:ESO)
The Hubble Space Telescope image shows a visible light view of the dust surrounding HD 100546 (Image:ESO)
A chart showing the position of HD 100546 in the southern constellation of Musca (The Fly) (Image:ESO)
An image of the sky around HD 100546 created using images from the Digitized Sky Survey 2 (Image:ESO)
Article Summary
The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) has been used to observe what is thought to be the formation of a gas giant similar to Jupiter. The candidate planet resides within a disk of dust and gas surrounding the young star HD 100546, located 335 light-years away.
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