A team of French and Swiss astronomers announced that they have discovered one of the smallest planets ever found outside the solar system in an observatory in northern Chile.

It is a planet orbiting the red dwarf star G1 581 in the Libra constellation, some 20.5 light years from the Earth, they said. The star has a mass of one-third of the sun, while the exoplanet is roughly as large as the Neptune, 17 times larger than the Earth.

The astronomers spotted a red dwarf star that was oscillating slowly at a speed of 50 kph. The planet took only 5.4 days to complete each orbit, much shorter than the 365 days taken by the Earth to travel around the sun.

Only two of the 200 red dwarfs under study showed evidence of planets, said the astronomers.

Of the 100 stars closest to the Earth, some 80 are red dwarves.

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