Gliese 625, also known as GJ 625, G 202-48 and HIP 80459, is a quiet M2V-type star located in the constellation Draco, approximately 21 light-years from Earth.
Its low activity combined with its long rotation period, of more than 70 days, makes Gliese 625 a very interesting candidate to search for rocky planets.
The newly-discovered planet, Gliese 625b, has a mass of no less than 2.8 times that of Earth, making it a so-called ‘super-Earth.’
Alejandro Suárez Mascareño, an astronomer at Geneva Observatory and the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and co-authors made the discovery using observations of Gliese 625 collected by the HARPS-N spectrograph at the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, a 3.6-m telescope located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain.
Gliese 625b does fall within its parent star’s habitable zone.
To read more, click here.