The Lyot Project has spotted a bright spot around the star AB Aurigae. There is a chance that this spot is a mass of cloud and gas surrounding a planet in its embryo phase.

The planet can't be seen directly from the image (which you can click for a higher resolution). But an empty spot in the northeastern area of AB Aurigae's disc may have been caused by gravity from the young planet.

AB Aurigae is 270 light years away from us and is 2.4 times as huge as the sun. So if a planet is indeed developing there, it may still not possess living conditions for humans. With the intensified search for planets outside our solar system, that is always the first concern.

However, these findings could point to a means of imaging planets around stars. The previously discovered 270 planets around stars were discovered because of star wobbles caused by the planet's gravity.

The Lyot Project, founded to study the surroundings of stars, was able to take a picture of AB Aurigae by blocking out the central, glaring light of the star, only photographing its surroundings. Astronomers from the American Museum of Natural History in New York acknowledged that the image may just be noise but still believe that the empty space is caused by the presence of an object.