A new super-Earth, less than 20 light-years away from our solar system, is reviving astronomers' enthusiasm for the search for potentially habitable planets.
Called "GJ251c," it orbits a red star in the constellation Lynx and lies in the so-called "habitable zone," the region where temperatures could support liquid water on the surface.
The discovery was announced by an international team of researchers using two of the world's most advanced spectrographs, the Habitable-Zone Planet Finder (on the Hobby-Eberly telescope in Texas) and Nieid, installed at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
Analysis of the combined data revealed tiny wobbles in the star caused by the gravitational pull of a planet about four Earth masses, with a 54-day orbit.