Originally published April 18, 2014

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An Earth-like planet that orbits around the edge of its star's habitable zone has been discovered by scientists in the constellation of Cygnus. Other habitable stars have been found before, but none so closely match with the Earth's size.

The planet, known as Kepler-186f, is about 500 light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by the Kepler space telescope, which finds the planet by measuring the amount of starlight blocked when a planet passes in front of its star. Scientist then use the data recovered to determine the size of the planet and to estimate its mass and density.

Kepler-186f is about 1.1 times the size of Earth. Research suggests that a planet this size is likely to be rocky. Kepler-186f orbits around its star once every 130 days and lies at a distance from its star that would allow liquid water to exist on its surface.

Kepler-186f is the outermost planet in the Kepler-186 System, which has five known planets orbiting around an M-dwarf star. With its smaller star, the planet receives only about one-third the heat energy that Earth gets from the Sun. However, as a smaller star is more active, it is more likely to produce more solar flares and radiation potentially harmful to life.

Even though the planet is in the habitable zone of its system, whether it is actually habitable is unclear.

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