The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope most recent project has been studying a short lived disk of material surrounding a newly formed star, T Cha. This is a sun sized star that is 750 million years old and is 350 light years away. Astronomers have found a gap in the disk that they are thinking is either a brown dwarf or a planet. This is the first star that has a “might be planet” orbiting a transitional disk. The gap lies about 700 million miles away from the star. T Cha gives astronomers a chance to see how planetary systems form. Unfortunately, since it is so far away from Earth, they will have to tweek the VLT in order to get as much information as possible.
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