They might be planets.

Peering into disks of gas and dust that surround young stars, two teams of astronomers have for the first time imaged dusty clumps that could be planets in the making.

Material within the disks, ubiquitous around newborn stars, can coalesce into planets. It's uncertain whether the faint clumps seen in the new images are planets, heavier objects known as brown dwarfs, or just background objects that happen to lie in the same patch of sky.

The glare of starlight makes it difficult to study the faint light from disks. One team, led by Ben Oppenheimer of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, used a U.S. Air Force telescope in ...