For the First Time, Astronomers Witness a Planet's Birth

An artist's conception of planets forming in a transition disk like LkCa 15. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) A fledgling star system is giving astronomers the cosmic version of the “birds and the bees talk.” For the first time astronomers directly observed a planet growing in its very early stages of life, and that’s quite a rare find: Of the nearly 1,900 planets discovered outside of our solar system the infant planet, known as LkCa 15 b, is the only one known to be forming as you read this. It’s a first-of-its-kind opportunity to study a planet in this stage early of development.