September 15, 2011
Astronomers in Chile have discovered more than 50 new planets
The SCience World reported that "The astronomers say the discovery is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time. They presented their findings at the Extreme Solar Systems II conference this week in Wyoming.
The new planets were located using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) at the European Southern Observatory‘s (ESO) La Silla Observatory in Chile.
The exoplanets (planets found outside of our Solar System) include 16 super Earths – planets with a mass between one and 10 times that of Earth. While there aren’t any super Earths in our Solar System, scientists say they appear to be quite common around other stars".