Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2015

38 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2015 PLANETOLOGY During a test phase of ALMA, astronomers took the most detailed picture ever of a planetary system in for- mation. What the image reveals basically confirms what predicted by computer simulations, but it also high- lights an unexpected and untimely planetary genesis. HL Tauri, an revolutionar U ntil recentlywe could see de- tails of protoplan- etary disks only in artists’ impressions such as this. Now we can see them on real images. [ESO/L. Calçada]