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Outside our solar system, some 1,900 planets have been discovered so far and some of them are still seen as forming. This discovery was reported in a journal published in Nature that offers the scientist of clear evidence of how gas and dust particles merge to create planets. An author of the study, Professor Peter Tuthill of University of Sydney said, "We have found a clear case where we can join all of the dots showing how planets are forming by accreting the gas and dust left over from the formation of their star."

The discovery was made by the astronomers when they were observing a distant star called Lick-Calcium 15 or LkCa15 located about 450 light years away in a constellation known as Taurus. The star that was discovered is fairly young, only 2 million years old and is seen surrounded by the circumstellar disk made of dust and gas formed by it. The astronomers concentrated on the large gap that was formed over a period of 5-years in the circumstellar disk that was being cleared as a result of formation of new planets. They identified the emission of light caused due to hot gas falling on a newly formed planet that they called LkCa 15 b, reported ABC Australia. This process is called accretion where the small particles of gas, dust grains and meteoroids join together to form large bodies. LkCa 15b orbits its star from a distance of over 2 billion kilometers.

Professor Tuhill said, "This is a gas giant planet like Jupiter but a few times more massive". He also added, "This provides us with a nice story; we see the star surrounded by a disk of material, we see a gap in the disk where the material's missing, we see the planets that are in the gap, and we see material falling onto the planets," as reported by Ledger Gazette.