WASHINGTON - Astronomers have spotted orbiting around a young star a newborn planet that took only three million years to form - quite swift in cosmic terms - in a discovery that challenges the current understanding of the speed of planetary formation.

This infant world, estimated at around 10 to 20 times the mass of Earth, is one of the youngest planets beyond our solar system - called exoplanets - ever discovered. It resides alongside the remnants of the disk of dense gas and dust circling the host star - called a protoplanetary disk - that provided the ingredients for the planet to form.

The star it orbits is expected to become a stellar type called an orange dwarf, less hot and less massive than our sun. The star's mass is about 70 per cent that of the sun and it is about half as luminous. It is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 520 light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles.

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