TORONTO -- NASA’s Hubble Telescope is letting astronomers watch as a Jupiter-sized planet is being formed by feeding off material surrounding a young star. Although 4,000 exoplanets have been catalogued so far, only 15 have been directly imaged by telescopes, according to a press release. They’re often so far away and small that they appear only as dots in the best images, but NASA’s use of their Hubble Telescope is paving a new avenue into exoplanet research. The findings were published in the April 2021 edition of the Astronomical Journal. "We just don't know very much about how giant planets grow," said Brendan Bowler of the University of Texas at Austin in the release. "This planetary system gives us the first opportunity to witness material falling onto a planet. Our results open up a new area for this research."