Local Scientists Find Evidence of Habitable Planet - Central Coast News KION/KCBA

SANTA CRUZ, Calif.- An international team of astronomers, including a lead planet hunter at UC Santa Cruz, discovered that Tau Ceti, one of the closest and most Sun-like stars, may host five planets - with one in the star's habitable zone.

In a news release Wednesday, it said the star is at a distance of twelve light years and visible with the naked eye in the evening sky. One of the planets lies in the habitable zone of the star and has a mass around five times that of Earth, making it the smallest planet found to be orbiting in the habitable zone of any Sun-like star.

The international team of astronomers, from the UK, Chile, the USA, and Australia, combined more than six-thousand observations from three different instruments and intensively modelled the data. Using new techniques, the team has found a method to detect signals half the size previously thought possible. This greatly improves the sensitivity of searches for small planets and suggests that Tau Ceti is not a lone star, but hosts a rich planetary system.

Steve Vogt from University of California Santa Cruz said "This discovery is in keeping with our emerging view that virtually every star has planets, and that the galaxy must have many such  otentially habitable Earth-sized planets. They are everywhere, even right next door!"

Vogt said in the news release, "So our solar system is, in some sense, a bit of a freak and not the most typical kind of system that Nature cooks up."