This rocky planet, discovered with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, is smaller than Earth, and flies around its tiny cool star every three days. Barnard's star is six light-years away from us, in the constellation Ophiuchus. The only closer stars are the trio that make up the Alpha Centauri system.

Using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star, the closest single star to our sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet,