Scientists in Chile have captured the most detailed photo yet of the birth of a planetary system outside of our own. 

Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA, pointed the powerful sensor at HL Tauri, a young star about 450 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. They found what science calls a "protoplanetary disk," a saucer-shaped cloud of dust and gas that is the precursor of a solar system in the final stages of collapsing into planets. 

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The image looks something like an incandescent bulls-eye, with HL Tauri blazing in the center. The ALMA team speculates that the dark "rings" could be the orbits of small planets that have swept up red-hot dust and debris into themselves as they accrue more and more mass. 

"These features are almost certainly the result of young planet-like bodies that are being formed in the disk. This is surprising since such young stars are not expected to have large planetary bodies capable of producing the structures we see in this image," said Stuartt Corder, ALMA Deputy Director. 

"When we first saw this image we were astounded at the spectacular level of detail," said ALMA team member Catherine Vlahakis. "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 revolutionize theories of planet formation."

In a stroke of luck, the disk can be viewed head-on and in its entirety from Earth, rather than from the side. This gives Corder, Vlahakis and other scientists the unprecedented opportunity to observe and record planetary formation as it happens. 

"Most of what we know about planet formation today is based on theory," said European Southern Observatory Director General Tim de Zeeuw. "Images with this level of detail have up to now been relegated to computer simulations or artist's impressions. This high resolution image of HL Tauri demonstrates what ALMA can achieve when it operates in its largest configuration and starts a new era in our exploration of the formation of stars and planets." 

The sun, Earth, and the other planets of the Solar System are thought to have been born out of a disk of material similar to that of HL Tauri some 4.6 billion years ago.

Tagssolar system, HL Tauri, planet formation, protoplantetary disk, Taurus, planet