NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed an Earth like planet forming 424 light-years away in a star system called HD 113766.

Agency astronomers have discovered a huge belt of warm dust - enough to build a Mars-size planet or larger - swirling around a distant star that is just slightly more massive than our Sun.

The dust belt, which they suspect is clumping together into planets, is located in the middle of the system's terrestrial habitable zone. This is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on any rocky planets that might form. Earth is located in the middle of our Sun's terrestrial habitable zone.

Scientists say, at 10 million years, the star is perfectly aged to form a rocky planet.

"The timing for this system to be building an Earth is very good. If the system was too young, its planet-forming disk would be full of gas, and it would be making gas-giant planets like Jupiter instead. If the system was too old, then dust aggregation or clumping would have already occurred and all the system's rocky planets would have already formed," said Dr. Carey Lisse, of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md.

Dr. Lisse said the conditions for forming an Earth-like planet are more than just being in the right place at the right time and around the right star - it's also about the right mix of dusty materials.

Using Spitzer's infrared spectrometer instrument, he determined that the material in HD 113866 is more processed than the snowball-like stuff that makes up infant solar systems and comets, which are considered cosmic "refrigerators" because they contain pristine ingredients from the early solar system.

Dr. Lisse said HD 113766 does not contain any water ice, carbonates or fragile organic materials.

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