See the birth of a PLANET: Incredible photos reveal the weird and wonderful ways worlds form in different regions of our galaxy

They look like a bizarre collection of objects, from an eagle spreading its wings to a spinning top and a Japanese ‘shuriken’ throwing weapon.

But these stunning new images released today show ‘planet-forming disks’: swirling rings of gas and dust surrounding young stars in the Milky Way.

Their locations several hundred light years away from us – or trillions upon trillions of kilometers away – make them appear like tiny pinpricks in the night sky.

So scientists used the powerful Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the European Southern Observatory in Chile to image more than 80 of them in more detail than ever before.

Many look like perfect circles or ‘bowls’ with bright light toward the center, while others look like asymmetrical blobs with no uniformity.

In total, scientists have published the images of 86 young stars with planet-forming disks around them – all in our Milky Way Galaxy – in three articles in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“This study is the largest of its kind to date and uses the most advanced telescopes and instruments to allow us to capture this peak in the planetary nurseries,” said Dr. Christian Ginski, one of the authors and an astronomer at the University from Galway, Ireland. MailOnline.

The images reveal the ‘extraordinary diversity’ of planet-forming disks, but Dr Ginski and colleagues don’t yet know exactly why this is.

‘Although we’re not yet sure why the discs look so diverse, it’s quite amazing to see this diversity,’ he told MailOnline.

Researchers used the VLT to study the 86 young stars in three different star-forming regions of our Milky Way: Taurus, Chamaeleon I and Orion.

Taurus and Chamaeleon I are both about 600 light-years from Earth, while Orion, a gas-rich cloud about 1,600 light-years from us, is known to be the birthplace of several stars more massive than the Sun.

One, called T Tau in Taurus, looks like a small baby salamander, while V1012 in Orion resembles an eagle spreading its wings.

Many are remarkably circular, with striking white in the center and purple further out.

The colors in the images are a visual aid to represent different brightness levels, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) told MailOnline.

Purple corresponds to the faint edges of these disks, while orange and white show the brighter areas towards the center, closer to the host star.

“But the underlying data in each image was captured in a single ‘colour’, so to speak,” an ESO spokesperson said.

‘These images were taken in infrared light and show starlight being scattered by dust grains in the disks around these stars.

‘We cannot see the stars themselves in these images, because they were blocked with a special mask during the observations, similar to creating an artificial solar eclipse.

‘This reveals the disks, which would otherwise drown in the intense glare of the stars.’

The team was able to gain fascinating insights from the telescope data on galaxies themselves.

In Orion, for example, they found that stars from ‘binary stars’ – which have two or more stars that are gravitationally bound together and orbiting each other – are less likely to have large planet-forming disks.

This is a significant result considering that, unlike our Sun, which is the only star in our solar system, most stars in our Milky Way have solar companions.

In addition, the uneven appearance of the disks in this region suggests the possibility that massive planets are embedded within them, causing the disks to warp and become misaligned.

Dr. Ginski pointed out that a minority of these planet-forming disks may ultimately not form planets at all, despite the name.

“It’s not at all clear whether each disk will form a planet,” he told MailOnline.

‘Some disks may not be large enough, or spreading too quickly, to allow planet formation.

‘But indeed, from the many thousands of planets we have discovered, it appears that planet formation is a common process around young stars.

“So it is very likely that most of these disks have planets embedded in them.”

The three newly published papers – each corresponding to a region of the Milky Way – can be found here: Taurus, Chameleon I And Orion.