Making planets is messy. It involves giant clouds of gas and dust, and frequent collisions between planetary building blocks. And it takes tens of millions of years to sort out.

A good example of how it works is seen in the star system Beta Pictoris. The star is only about 20 million years old. It has two known planets, both of which are much more massive than Jupiter, the giant of our own solar system. But the star also is encircled by huge disks of gas and dust – the raw materials for making planets.

And the supply is constantly changing. In one example, Webb Space Telescope revealed a ribbon of dust that looks like a cat’s tail. The tail might be debris from a collision between two big space rocks a century ago as seen from Earth.

And earlier this year, scientists reported evidence of a more recent collision. They compared observations made by Webb to those from another space telescope a couple of decades ago. They found that two clumps of dust had vanished. That suggests there was a collision between two giant space rocks as recently as 20 years ago. The impact blasted out huge clouds of dust, which were seen by the earlier telescope. But the star has blown away most of that dust – part of the messy process of making planets.

From the far-southern U.S., Beta Pictoris just climbs into view around midnight, quite low in the south. It’s to the upper right of Canopus, the second-brightest star in the night sky.

Script by Damond Benningfield