spacetoday.net: Astronomers announce discovery of dozens of exoplanets

Posted: Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 7:51 AM ET (1151 GMT)
HD 85512b exoplanet illustration (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Astronomers announced Monday the discovery of 50 new extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, including a "super-Earth" that orbits on the edge of a star's habitable zone. Astronomers discovered the exoplanets using a spectrograph mounted on a telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Of the 50 new exoplanets, 16 are so-called "super-Earths", planets between one and ten times the mass of the Earth. One of those 16, HD 85512 b, is about 3.6 times the mass of the Earth and orbits on the edge of its star's habitable zone, a region that would allow liquid water to exist on the planet's surface. The overall discovery, the largest number of exoplanets announced at one time, brings the total number of confirmed exoplanets to over 600.