Description: This artist's conception shows a lump of material in a swirling, planet-forming disk. Astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence that a companion to a star, either another star or a planet, could be pushing planetary material together, as illustrated here. Planets are born out of spinning disks of gas and dust. They can carve out lanes or gaps in the disks as they grow bigger and bigger. Scientists used Spitzer's infrared vision to study the disk around a star called LRLL 31, located about 1,000 light-years away in the IC 348 region of the constellation Perseus. Spitzer's new infrared observations reveal that the disk has both an inner and outer gap. The size of the lump and the planet have been exaggerated to better illustrate the dynamics of the system.
