A planet forming disc orbiting a young star has been captured in detail for the first time, giving scientists a unique chance to obtain information on how solar systems form. Our own solar system has been assumed to have formed in a similar environment, the new images uniquely give insight into our very own understandings of how the planets in our own solar system formed around the Sun, including Earth.

The images was captured from the Atacama Large Millimeter and Sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), a land-based telescope in Chile,  and provided scientist an image displaying a protoplanetary disk surrounding the newborn star HL-Tauri, distanced nearly 450 light years away. Scientists for the last decade have plunged head first into a new wave of scientific analysis with high definition photographs of planets and stars hundred of light years away. The recent images are the zenith of this scientific wave, as more and more high definition images are expected to surface.

Although astronomers have preluded an understanding to how planets formed around others stars, known as exoplanets, only a small amount of knowledge was known about the process by which exoplanets form. The images captured by the ALMA provides the greatest insight in history to how an exoplanets and suns create their orbiting relationship.

One image specifically illustrates rings of dust left over from the birth of the star, but more importantly illustrates to scientists gaps in the rings. Astronomers report these gaps give insights as evidence the dust has begun clumping together forming masses of celestial bodies.  The sun HL-Tauri is young of a star at only a million years old, scientists before these images did not believe exoplanets could form so early on.

“When we first saw this image we were astounded at the spectacular level of detail. HL Tauri is no more than a million years old, yet already its disc appears to be full of forming planets. This one image alone will revolutionise theories of planet formation,” said Catherine Vlahakis, ALMA Deputy Program Scientist and Lead Program Scientist for the ALMA Long Baseline Campaign.