AP

Los Angeles, Nov 9: Astronomers have said they have discovered a fifth planet orbiting a sun-like star 41 light years away, making it the first planetary quintet outside our solar system. The newfound planet joins four others circling the nearby star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer.

Although it resides in the star’s so-called habitable zone, a place where liquid water and mild temperatures should exist, it is more like Saturn than Earth and therefore not likely to support life.

Still, scientists have not ruled out the possibility of finding an Earth-like planet within this system as technology improves. “It’s a system that appears to be packed with planets,” said co-discoverer Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University, on Tuesday.

Ranked fourth from 55 Cancri, the latest planet is about 45 times the mass of Earth and has an orbit of 260 days. It was detected after nearly two decades of observations by ground-based telescopes using the Doppler technique that measures a planet’s stellar wobble.