Astronomers using a telescope in Chile have discovered 50 previously unknown exoplanets.
The bumper haul of new worlds includes 16 "super-Earths" - planets with a great mass than our own, but below those of gas giants such as Jupiter.
One of these super-Earths orbits inside the habitable zone - the region around a star where conditions could be hospitable to life.
The planets were discovered using the Harps telescope at La Silla in Chile.
The new findings are being presented at a meeting called Extreme Solar Systems in Wyoming, US, and will appear in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Lead author Dr Michel Mayor, from the University of Geneva in Switzerland, said the haul included "an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun".
He added: "The new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating."
Of the new finds, five planets have masses less than five times that of Earth.
"These planets will be among the best targets for future space telescopes to look for signs of life in the planet's atmosphere by looking for chemical signatures such as evidence of oxygen," said Francesco Pepe, from the Geneva Observatory, who contributed to the research.
One of the worlds, called HD 85512 b, is estimated to be only 3.6 times the mass of the Earth.
It is located at the edge of the habitable zone - a narrow region around a star in which liquid water can be present on the surface of a planet.
Observations with Harps have also allowed astronomers to come up with an improved estimate of the likelihood that a star such as the Sun will host low-mass planets such as the Earth (as opposed to giants such as Jupiter).
They found that about 40% of such stars have at least one planet less massive than Saturn.
Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-14890143
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