S Marks the Spot of a Planet Being Born Around Another Star

About 450 light-years from the Sun, in the constellation of Ophiuchus (yes, that Ophiuchus), lies a young star. If it were off by itself somewhere it would be an unremarkable star, a red dwarf roughly half the mass of the Sun. The galaxy is lousy with them. But it's not by itself. It's sitting in a vast dense cloud of gas and dust sometimes called the Ophiuchus star-forming region. Stars are being born in this huge nebula, and Elias 2-27, as the star is called, is one of them. Stars form as piec...