NASA scientists have photographed a baby planet forming within a dusty ring around a young star a groundbreaking discovery that offers rare visual evidence of planetary birth in real time.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers observed the star PDS 70, located about 370 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. The image reveals a bright clump of material embedded in the star’s outer disk, which researchers believe is a newborn gas giant accumulating mass from surrounding dust and gas.

This marks the first direct image of a planet forming in a circumstellar ring a key stage in planetary evolution that has long been theorized but never clearly seen. The discovery helps scientists better understand how planets emerge from protoplanetary disks and how their orbits and compositions are shaped.

The baby planet, dubbed PDS 70c, is still in its early growth phase and may take millions of years to fully form. Its presence also suggests that planet formation can occur in multiple zones within a star’s disk, challenging previous models that assumed a more centralized process.

NASA researchers emphasized that this breakthrough was made possible by JWST’s advanced infrared capabilities, which allow it to peer through dense clouds of cosmic dust. The findings open new avenues for studying exoplanet formation and the diversity of planetary systems across the universe.