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European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun. The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. The results will appear online in the journal Nature on 17 October 2012.

Astronomers expect significant science to emerge from the deluge of data being returned from NASA’s Kepler planet-finder, now that researchers have had time to verify some of the first findings from the orbiting space telescope. At a press conference Jan. 4 during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, project scientists reported the spacecraft has demonstrated the sensitivity and validated the predicted stellar conditions that will enable it to find Earthlike planets orbiting other stars. In their first public release of Kepler results, astronomers reported the discovery of five more extrasolar planets in data collected during the first six weeks...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Earthlike planets covered with deep oceans that could harbor life may be found in as many as a third of solar systems discovered outside of our own, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. These solar systems feature gas giants known as "Hot Jupiters," which orbit extremely close to their parent stars -- even closer than Mercury to our sun, University of Colorado researcher Sean Raymond said. The close-orbiting gassy planets may help encourage the formations of smaller, rocky, Earthlike planets, they reported in the journal Science. "We now think there is a new class of ocean-covered, and possibly...