Astronomers have found a similar sized planet to Earth which could be habitable due to the temperature and atmosphere.
The planet called Wolf 1069 b, which orbits a red dwarf star, is a relatively close 31 light years away from Earth in the Cygnus constellation and it also has a similar mass to Earth.
While there have been more than 5,000 exoplanets - outside of our solar system - discovered since the first in the 1990s, there are only about a dozen which are in the labelled “habitable zone”.
This is the region where the planet is sufficiently close to its sun so that there can be water and yet not too far away to make it too cold.
And Wolf 1069 b is the sixth closest planet in mass to Earth that has been found in its habitable zone.
It also appears to have retained much of its atmosphere which could make it the starting point in a search for chemicals that would be indicators of life.
The existence of the planet has been confirmed by a team of 50 astronomers after it was found by a telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain, as part of the CARMENES survey.
The study was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"When we analysed the data of the star Wolf 1069, we discovered a clear, low-amplitude signal of what appears to be a planet of roughly Earth mass," said Diana Kossakowski, author of the study, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
"It orbits the star within 15.6 days at a distance equivalent to one-fifteenth of the separation between Earth and the Sun."
The Carmenes survey has been looking for orbiting planets around 324 red dwarf stars for seven years.
Red dwarf stars are smaller and so cooler than the Sun in our solar system yet make up around 70% of stars that have been discovered in the Milky Way.
While it appears as though Wolf 1069 could be too close to its planet, as it emits less radiation it will be cooler and so may still be habitable.
Wolf 1069 b is now well placed to have further investigations into biological conditions to see if that there is a possibility of life, although it will be a long process.
"We’ll probably have to wait another ten years for this," Ms Kossakowski said. "Though it’s crucial we develop our facilities, considering most of the closest potentially habitable worlds are detected via the radial velocity method only."
