First image of baby planet being formed beautifully captured

In a first, astronomers say they have beautifully captured an image of a planet forming in the dust swiftly swirling around a young star.

The tiny planet appears as a bright spot in the first ever image of it captured using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, say scientists.

Signs of baby planets have been detected before, but astronomers weren't sure whether those observations might simply be features in the swirling dust, said Miriam Kepler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany.

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Scientists describe the planet, located about 3 billion kilometres (1.86 billion miles) from the star PDS 70, as a gas giant bigger than Jupiter.

They say it has a cloudy atmosphere and a surface temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit).

The study will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, according to agencies.