SUN-LIKE STAR MAY BE FORMING PLANETS from The Associated Press WASHINGTON - A young, sun-like star with orbiting blobs of dust and rock may be forming planets, giving astronomers their first chance to observe the evolution of a planetary system like our own.
The star, named KH 15D, is unique in astronomy because it is periodically obscured by clouds of matter that orbit between the star and viewers on Earth, said William Herbst of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. Herbst said Wednesday the orbiting material may be building planets, perhaps following the same evolutionary process that is thought to have formed the Earth and its sister planets. "The processes that are going on in this inner disk region could be analogous to what was going on in the formation of the Earth," said Herbst. "It could shed light on our origins by helping us to understand how our Earth and the planets in the solar system came to be." <http://www.nando.net/healthscience/story/440077p-3521949c.html> To find out more about KH 15D, visit its Web page, hosted by Van Vleck Observatory at Wesleyan University: <http://www.astro.wesleyan.edu/kh15d/> ANOTHER COUSIN TO JUPITER IS FOUND from The New York Times For the second time in a week, astronomers have announced the discovery of a Jupiter-like planet around a distant star, and they say this one could be part of a planetary system more similar to the Sun's than any yet discovered. A team of European astronomers yesterday reported detecting a large gaseous planet at the star HD 190360a that appeared to be like Jupiter in mass and its near-circular orbit. It is close enough in other characteristics to encourage speculation that the solar system has some familiar company in the galactic neighborhood. The announcement followed one last week by a team of Americans, who said they had found a planet resembling Jupiter, though with about four times the mass, in a Jupiter-like orbit around the star 55 Cancri. <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/19/science/19PLAN.html>
