Discovery of new planet similar to Earth

An international team of astronomers has discovered a planet more similar to
Earth than any found to date. This groundbreaking discovery of a new extra solar
planet, or exoplanet has been made by scientists searching for Earth-like
planets capable of supporting life.

The first details of this discovery are made in today’s edition of Nature.

Full story:

http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMDJ3NZCIE_index_0.html

It's Far, It's Small, It's Cool: It's an Icy Exoplanet! (ESO 03/06)

Using a network of telescopes scattered across the globe, including the Danish
1.54m telescope at ESO La Silla (Chile), astronomers discovered the least
massive exoplanet around an ordinary star detected so far. The planet, which is
also the coolest, is only about 5 times as massive as the Earth, and circles its
parent star in about 10 years. Its discovery marks a groundbreaking result in
the search for planets that support life.

Read all the details, look at the images or watch the associated video with
computer animations, in ESO 03/06 at

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-03-06.html

A longer web story is also available at

http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-03-06_p2.html