Astronomers from the US and UK have found evidence for the sort of debris associated with earth-type planetary formation around three stars - Vega, Fomalhaut and Beta Pictoris. The team used a new instrument, the submillimetre common-user bolometer array (SCUBA), at the James Clerk Maxwell telescope in Hawaii to detect the dust in the debris. The team had to observe the dust at submillimetre wavelengths because glare from the star tends to obscure any debris at optical and infrared wavelengths. The report is published in the April 23 issue of Nature.