The formation of the youngest plant from gas and dust was captured by a University of Hawaii astronomer Adam Kraus.

Using Keck telescopes, Kraus and his colleague Michael Ireland from Macquarie University and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, captured the first direct image of a planet, LkCA 15 b, being born.

LkCa 15 b , the youngest planet ever found, is 450 light years away from Earth.

In a statement, Kraus said, "In the past, you couldn't measure this kind of phenomenon because it's happening so close to the star. But, for the first time, we've been able to directly measure the planet itself as well as the dusty matter around it."

The astronomers found the planet while monitoring150 young dusty stars which led to a more concentrated study of a dozen stars.

The star LkCa 15, the star where the name of the planet came from, was the team's second target. Recognizing that there was something new in what they are seeing, the astronomers gathered more data on the star a year later.
"We realized we had uncovered a super Jupiter-sized gas planet, but that we could also measure the dust and gas surrounding it. We'd found a planet at its very beginning," Kraus said.

He presented the discovery Wednesday at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.