Australasian astronomers help find huge new planet

Australasian researchers have helped discover a huge new planet in the Milky Way galaxy.

Using a new scientific technique, Tasmanian astronomers have helped to detect a large planet, renewing hopes of finding Earth-like planets.

The large gaseous planet, called OB-05-071, is between Earth and the centre of the Milky Way about 25,000 light years away.

The new scientific technique involves using the gravitational pull of a star to act as a giant lens, providing a better chance to make out a planet.

This pioneering technique helped members of an international collaborative team discover the new planet which is a thousand times bigger than Earth.

"It looks like a fairly extraordinary, massive planet," University of Tasmania Professor John Dickey told ABC radio.

"But we know many other planets around other stars, some of which are somewhat like this.

"What's special about this event is, it was discovered in a way, that is this gravitational lens method, which could, in principle, turn up Earth-like planets as well.

"Our other ways of finding planets around stars are only sensitive to very massive ones like Jupiter.

"We've been struggling with this technique to try to open the door to finding Earth-like planets, which I think is now much more hopeful."

Professor Dickey said the discovery was made through a kind of a chance juxtaposition of a far-away star in our galaxy with another star, apparently with a planetary system, which passed just in front of that background star.

"Things like this happen fairly often but it's only just in the last few years that we've known how to search for them," he said.

"What transpires then, as the foreground star with its planet, passes in front of, or in the direction of the background star, is we see something which is called a gravitational lens event.

He said this was like an eclipse on Earth.

"Rather than one star blocking the light of the other, it magnifies the light of the background star."

The international team uses telescopes around the southern hemisphere in Hobart, Perth, South Africa, Chile.

- AAP