NASA scientists announced last week that they had found a fifth planet orbiting 55 Cancri, a distant star similar to our sun. The enormous gas planet is in the constellation Cancer, 41 light-years from Earth. Its planetary system closely resembles our solar system. "It's a system that appears to be packed with planets," says Debra Fischer, an astronomer at San Francisco State University.
Astronomers have been studying 55 Cancri for the past 19 years. Four planets were discovered circling the star between 1996 and 2004. Could there be an Earth-like planet out there? Astronomer Geoff Marcy believes so. "When you look up into the night sky and see the twinkling lights of stars, you can imagine with certainty that they have their own complement of planets," he says.