Over 50 new exoplanets discovered, some potentially habitable

• Astronomers have discovered more than 50 new exoplanets, including 16 super—Earths, one of which orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star, thanks to ESO's world—leading exoplanet hunter HARPS.
• "The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super—Earths and Neptune—type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better - the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating," said Mayor.
• In the eight years since it started surveying stars like the sun using the radial velocity technique, HARPS has been used to discover more than 150 new planets.

HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher)

The High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) is a high-precision echelle spectrograph installed in 2002 on ESO's (European Southern Observatory) 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. The first light was achieved in February 2003. It is a second-generation radial-velocityspectrograph, based on experience with the ELODIE and CORALIE instruments.