BRITAIN: Astronomers said yesterday they had discovered two new Jupiter-sized planets using a technique which hunts for stars that "wink".
The planets, named Wasp-1b and Wasp-2b, were found 1,000 light years away in the Andromeda constellation and 500 light years away in Delphinus respectively.
The discovery is being hailed as a significant breakthrough in the search for new planets orbiting distant stars.
The planets, among the hottest yet found, were initially pinpointed by academics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and several other UK institutions.
They used wide-angle telescopes and digital-style cameras based in the Canary Islands and South Africa which surveyed millions of stars across the night sky.
Colleagues from France and Switzerland then used a French-developed spectrograph known as "Sophie" to identify the masses as planets. They did this by detecting the tug or "wobble" planets produce as they orbit a star.
