Astronomers have discovered near the star HD 40307, located in 42 light years from Earth, the planet, a potentially suitable for life, said in an article published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

First of potentially habitable planet outside the Solar system in 2011 found space telescope "Kepler". However, Kepler planet-22b is much further - 600 light-years from Earth.

The star HD 40307 in the constellation of the Painter - orange dwarf spectral class K, which is about 23% lighter than the Sun and darker. In 2008, scientists from the European southern Observatory (Chile) with HARPS spectrograph found next to the star of the three planets with masses 4.2, 6,7 and 9.4 times the mass of Earth. These planets are very "close" orbits around the sun, their "year" lasts 4,3, 9.6 20,4 earth days, respectively.

The group headed by Mikko Twomey (Mikko Tuomi) from the British University of Hertfordshire re-analyzed data from the HARPS spectrograph using new, more sensitive techniques, and found three more "missing" planet.

"We found two clear additional signal, with the period 34 and 51 days, which planets candidates with a minimum of weight in a few Earth masses. The sixth planet... has a circulation period of around 200 days... and a lot approximately seven Earth masses", - the article reads.

The sixth planet - HD 40307 - attracted the attention of scientists, because it was almost exactly in the middle of "zone of life" around its sun. "Zone of life" scientists call the region around a star where on the surface like the Earth planet may be liquid water.

According to calculations, "zone of life" the star HD 40307 occupies a strip from 0.43 to 0.85 astronomical units (average distances from the sun to the Earth) from it. The radius of the orbit HD 40307 is 0.6 astronomical unit, and it is in this range.

"The larger the radius of the orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere can completely maintain life" - says one of the authors Hugh Jones (Hugh Jones), whose words are resulted in the message of the University.

Scientists note that the planetary system HD 40307 should be a goal for future research with space telescopes.