July 5, 2002

With a Wink, a Star Reveals Clues to How Planets Are Born

By RICHARD MONASTERSKY

An international team of astronomers has announced that it has discovered a blinking star -- one periodically eclipsed by dust, rocks, and other building blocks of planets. Because the star resembles an early version of the Sun, the finding could yield clues about how Earth grew from a cloud of dust during the solar system's infancy.

Called KH 15D, the three-million-year-old star "is a unique object in astronomy and a potentially very important object for understanding the

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