Combined SPHERE and ALMA image of material orbiting V960 Mon

At the centre of this image is the young star V960 Mon, located over 5000 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros. Dusty material with potential to form planets surrounds the star. 

Observations obtained using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s VLT, represented in yellow in this image, show that the dusty material orbiting the young star is assembling together in a series of intricate spiral arms extending to distances greater than the entire Solar System. 

Meanwhile, the blue regions represent data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. The ALMA data peers deeper into the structure of the spiral arms, revealing large dusty clumps that could contract and collapse to form giant planets roughly the size of Jupiter via a process known as “gravitational instability”.