Scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington D.C. are celebrating the discovery of what they call the Super-Earth. They estimate that the planet named GJ 667Cc, is at least 4.5 times as massive as Earth and it orbits its host star every 28days. GJ 667Cc is located in the constellation Scorpius which is merely 22 light-years away from Earth.
“It’s the Holy Grail of exoplanet research to find a planet around a star orbiting at the right distance so it’s not too close where it would lose all its water and boil away, and not too far where it would all freeze,” Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told SPACE.com. “It’s right smack in the habitable zone — there’s no question or discussion about it. It’s not on the edge, it’s right in there.”
“If it has an atmosphere, it’s probably reddish all the time, because the star is really red,” Anglada-Escudé said. “It would be like being evening all the time.”
[also at Wikipedia]