New Planet discovered by NASA.

           Astronomers have discovered a new in triguing exoplanet about mass of the Earth, orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri star system - the nearest to our planet. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever found around a star like sun. The planet was detected using the Harps instrument on the 3.6 meter telescope at eso's la silla observatory in Chile. Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is nearest stellar system to our solar system - only 4.3 light years away.

            It is actually a triple star - a system consisting of two similar to the sun orbiting close to each other, designated Alpha Centauri A and B. "our observations  extended over more than four years using the Harps instrument and have revealed a tiny, but real, signal from a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days," says Xavier Dumusque, author of the paper.

            "IT is an extraordinary discovery and it has put our technique to the limit," Dumusque said. The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by gravitational pull of orbiting planet. Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass little more than that of Earth, is orbiting about six million kms away back in 1995 and since then there have been more than 800 confirmed discoveries, but most are much bigger than the Earth, and many are as big as Jupiter.