Swirling out of the stardust, a planet is born

MEET PDS 70b, the newest planet in the universe. It is a little larger than Jupiter, sizzles at 1,000C and is just a few million years old.

This image was captured as the planet, which looks little more than a golden blob, formed from vast swirls of gas and dust around a young star 370million light years away in the Milky Way.

Experts from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy believe this first glimpse of such a young planet could help unlock secrets of Earth’s origins. Researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to spot the planet.

Measuring the rays of light it sends back to Earth gives them a world of information about life on PDS 70b. They now know it’s cloudy up there and a year lasts 118 times as long as one on Earth.

Dr André Müller, from the German institute’s team, said: ‘The detection of a young planet like this is crucial to better understand the evolution of our solar system.’