This ominous image shows the birth of a planet

520 light-years away from Earth, a baby planet is born. While thousands of exoplanets have been identified so far, researchers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, or VLT, in Chile, have captured the birth of a planet for the very first time. Nestled in a thick disc of dust and gas surrounding a young star named AB Aurigae, a fiery spiral twists around the planet’s site of birth.

The rose-like spirals, which often herald the birth of baby planets, signify how the young objects disrupt the gas, causing waves as if it were a boat on a lake. The dandelion yellow twist region near the spiral’s center lies at the same distance from the star as Neptune from the Sun, or around 2.8 billion miles. Altogether, the twist, described as a spiral arm in a study published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysicsdetailing the image and its discovery, is caused directly by the formation of this young planet.

"The twist is expected from some theoretical models of planet formation," study co-author Anne Dutrey of the Astrophysics Laboratory of Bordeaux (LAB) in France explained in an ESO press release. "It corresponds to the connection of two spirals—one winding inwards of the planet's orbit, the other expanding outwards—which join at the planet location.” The spirals allow gas and dust to accumulate on the growing planet.