Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2016

28 SPACE CHRONICLES firm that TW Hydrae hosts a promi- nen t Planet formation in Earth-like orbit around young star T his new image from the Ata- cama Large Millimeter/sub- millimeter Array (ALMA) shows the finest detail ever seen in the planet-forming disc around the nearby Sun-like star TW Hy- drae. It reveals a tantalising gap at the same distance from the star as the Earth is from the Sun, which may mean that an in- fant version of our home planet, or pos- sibly a more mas- sive super-Earth, is beginning to form there. The star TW Hydrae is a popular tar- get of study for astronomers be- cause of its pro- ximity to Earth (only about 175 light-years away) and its status as an infant star (about 10 million years old). It also has a face-on orien- tation as seen from Earth. This gives as- tronomers a rare, undis- torted view of the com- by ESO MAY-JUNE 2016 plete protoplanetary disc around the star. "Previous studies with op- tical and radio tele- scopes con-