Astronomers reexamining star Gliese 667C, a relatively close neighbor to us, have uncovered more planets than previously thought orbiting the star. The new total brings the total number of planets around Gliese 667C to seven, with three of them lying in the habitable zone.
It is the first time that three planets within the same habitable zone have been spotted.
"We knew that the star had three planets from previous studies, so we wanted to see whether there were any more," says Mikko Tuomi from the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom.
"By adding some new observations and revisiting existing data we were able to confirm these three and confidently reveal several more. Finding three low-mass planets in the star's habitable zone is very exciting!"
The three low-mass planets lying within the habitable zone are of particular interest to scientists, since the habitable zone marks the area around a star where conditions may allow for liquid water to exist. The three planets are actually larger than Earth, but smaller than planets like Uranus and Neptune.
Gliese 667C, located 22 light-years away, is actually a rather low-mass, dim star, making the planets' existence even more intriguing. The habitable zone around Gliese 667C is the size of Mercury's orbit around our sun - a small area, in other words.
"The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is much greater if we can expect to find several of them around each low-mass star - instead of looking at ten stars to look for a single potentially habitable planet, we now know we can look at just one star and find several of them," said co-author Rory Barnes from the University of Washington.
The new planets were located using the European Space Obervatory's HARPS instrument.
You can read the study detailing the findings here.
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