Watching the birth of a planet

This is not the eye of a tornado; something far less destructive is happening in this image. Taken with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), new worlds are in the process of being born 520 light years away from Earth. This polarised image of the young star AB Aurigae shows a huge disc around it containing dust, gas and rock caught in a spin. Within the brighter spots, rocks are accreting more and more mass,

which will eventually bring enough material together to form planetesimals.