Astronomers announced on Monday that they have discovered a planet outside our solar system that could potentially support life.

European astronomers discovered the "super-Earth" planet along with 50 other planets circling an orange star that is smaller than our sun about 36 light-years away. The star, dubbed HD85512, is visible in the night sky in the constellation Vela.

The exoplanet circles the star every 59 days and lies at the "Goldilocks zone" where it is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. The new planet called HD85512b is the second planet discovered outside the solar system that could potentially support terrestrial life. The first called Gliese581d was discovered in 2007.

"If we are really, really lucky, this planet could be a habitat" like Earth, said Lisa Kaltenegger of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

The planet is about 3.6 times the mass of Earth. It hasn't been determined yet whether the planet is rocky like Earth or made of gas like Jupiter. The temperatures in the planet are estimated to range from 30 to 50 Celsius and anyone in the planet would feel very warm.

"It's going to be really muggy, just think about the muggiest (Washington) day you can think of," said Kaltenegger, who wrote the new study. "We're not saying it's habitable for you and me."

The planet would also need a lot of cloud cover to keep any surface water from boiling. While human beings would have a difficult time of living in the planet other types of life could evolve there. They would probably be shorter and squatter because gravity on the planet is 1.4 times the gravity of Earth.

The new planets were observed by the European Southern Observatory's special planet-hunting instrument called HARPS. The astronomers still need to determine if the newly discovered planet has an atmosphere and analyze the light for signs of water and other gases.