* Astronomy

According to Vogt, the planetary system around 61 Vir is an excellent candidate for study by the new Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope recently constructed at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton near San Jose.

"Needless to say, we're very excited to continue monitoring this system using APF" - Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is the principal investigator for the APF and is building a spectrometer for the new telescope that is optimised for finding planets.

The second new system found by the team features a 7.5-Earth-mass planet orbiting HD 1461, another near-perfect twin of the Sun located 76 light-years away. At least one and possibly two additional planets also orbit the star. Lying in the constellation Cetus, HD 1461 can be seen with the naked eye in the early evening under good dark-sky conditions.
The 7.5-Earth-mass planet, assigned the name HD 1461b, has a mass nearly midway between the masses of Earth and Uranus. The researchers said they cannot tell yet if HD 1461b is a scaled-up version of Earth, composed largely of rock and iron, or whether, like Uranus and Neptune, it is composed mostly of water.

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An international team of astronomers using telescopes in Australia and Hawaii have discovered four planets orbiting two stars the scientists say are similar to the Sun.
The planets were found by Australian, American and British astronomers using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales and the Keck Telescope in Hawaii.
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An international team of scientists have discovered four new planets that orbit two stars that are very similar to the Sun. These findings point to the detection of possible habitable worlds in the coming years.
The Researchers who published their work in the 'Astrophysical Journal', used the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales and the Keck telescope in Hawaii.
The astronomers discovered three planets with masses ranging from the 5.3 to the 24.9 masses of Earth orbiting the star 61 Virginis, which is virtually a twin of the Sun. Scientists used the Doppler shift technique, which measures how the stars wobble by the gravity of its planets.

"These planets are particularly exciting. These point to even smaller planets that might be appropriate and rocky for life"  - Chris Tinney, Member of the scientific team.

In our solar system Neptune has a mass of 17 times that of Earth. It seems there may be many similar to the Sun stars with planets that mass or less. 61 Virginis star, which you can see with the naked eye, is 28 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo.  The fourth planet is the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star 23 Librae, which is similar to the Sun. 23 Librae is 84 years light in the constellation of Libra.

Astronomers have discovered three new planets orbiting a sun-like star.
The exoplanets range between 5 - 25 earth masses.