Around 1200 light years away from Earth, there are five planets which are circling around the sun-like star called Kepler-62 in Lyra constellation, according to the latest discovery made by the scientists by making use of Kepler space telescope of NASA. Two of these planets, named Kepler-62f and Kepler-62e are said to be in such a position that they might have water on their surface, a condition which is necessary to support life.

Kepler scientist William Borucki, with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California explained that this is strongest evidence of the existence of Earth-sized planets in the star’s habitable zone. These two new Earth-like planets are outermost pair which is circling the Kepler-62 star.

The most distant planet is Kepler-62f, which is around 1.4 times as huge as that of Earth’s size. It can orbit its parent star in 267 days. Other Earth-like planet called Kepler-62e is 1.6 times as big as the size of Earth and it orbits around the star in 122 days.

However, whether one of these or both these plants have water on their surface or not is beyond the Kepler’s technical capabilities or the capabilities of any other telescope. This is so because Kepler actually works by checking the slight dips in light which come from the star that is caused by the planet passing by. Checking the information is very cumbersome process. Every downloaded data from Kepler has 18000 events of interests to the scientists.

It is important to note that the scientists are still studying the Kepler-62, which means that there might be chances of existence of other planets that have longer orbital periods.

Earlier, the Kepler team discovered a star that had six planets in its orbit. European researchers on the other hand had made use of various telescopes to discover seven-planet system.

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