7:23pm UK, Wednesday August 25, 2004

Astronomers are claiming to have found a "super-Earth" orbiting a star some 50 light years away.

They say the finding could significantly boost the hunt for worlds beyond our Solar System.

It's out there somewhere

The planet was spotted orbiting a Sun-like star, mu Arae, in a southern constellation called the Altar.

It is said to be bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. 

The so-far unnamed world is the smallest of the estimated 125 so-called extrasolar planets that have been detected so far. 

"This new planet appears to be the smallest yet discovered around a star other than the Sun.

"This makes mu Arae a very exciting planetary system," said French astronomer Francois Bouchy of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). 

Most of the extrasolar planets spotted so far have approximated the size of Jupiter, the giant of the Solar System. 

But this latest find is far smaller, with a mass of only 14 times that of the Earth, similar to Uranus. 

Much about this enigmatic world remains to be uncovered, least of all whether it may be habitable. 

The discovery was made thanks to a highly accurate spectrograph, a velocity-measuring instrument, on the ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla, Chile.