Astronomers Discover New Planet

By: Rob Adams
Staff Writer
Published: Nov 7, 2007

The earth-like planet is the fifth one found orbiting a nearby star.

The discovery marks the first quintuple planetary system ever found and it suggests that systems packed with planets might be much more abundant in the spatial universe than previously believed.

The planet is 45 times as massive as Earth and is now the fifth in a "family" of confirmed planets orbiting a nearby sun-like star.

Up to the present moment the vast majority of so-called exoplanets found around sun-like stars belonged to single-planet systems. There are huge gaps between the system's planets could mean that there's room for smaller Earthlike worlds to be orbiting in the star's habitable zone .

Astronomers say that they now know that our sun and its family of planets is not that unusual in the universe and architecturally, this new planetary system is reminiscent of our own solar system.

The star, called 55 Cancri, lies 41 light-years away in the constellation Cancer. From Earth it is clearly visible with binoculars. The newfound world—dubbed 55 Cancri f—is the fifth planet found around the star but is the fourth most distant.

There are 200 billion stars in our own Milky Way galaxy which unveils that there are billions of planetary systems, many as rich as our own.