A "super Earth" with a potential to support life has been discovered far outside our solar system, in a constellation called Vela.

Astronomers have recently discovered planet HD85512b along with over 50 new planets orbiting stars beyond the sun. This "super Earth" from Vela is about 36 light years from us, 3.6 times larger than Earth, and orbits its star in under 60 days, probably providing good conditions to support life.

The planet's distance from its star puts it within the star's habitable zone - where liquid water can exist on the surface under the right conditions. But the technology to determine other similarities between Earth and the Vela planet is not likely to be available soon.

Scientists want to find out whether super Earth has as many minerals as the sun's Earth, and detect whether it has an atmosphere, two other necessities for life.

The Vela planet is only the second planet found outside Earth's solar system where the environment may be just right to host life.

A planetary astronomer, Simon O'Toole, said highly sensitive instruments enable astronomers to find extrasolar planets more rapidly than ever.

''And we are getting closer to the holy grail of finding another Earth,'' said O'Toole, from the Australian Astronomical Observatory.

Of the 50 exoplanets discovered, the largest number ever announced at once, 16 were super-Earths, with a mass between one and 10 times that of Earth.

The findings are the result of an eight-year observation program run by the European Southern Observatory using a sensitive spectrograph called the High Accuracy Radial Planet Searcher, attached to a telescope in Chile.

Nearly 600 exoplanets have been found, with a further 1,200 candidates identified by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which sources exoplanets by observing changes in a star's brightness as a planet crosses in front of it.

The planet hunter and lead HARPS investigator, Michel Mayor, said the instrument's discoveries had exceeded all expectations, locating a rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets rotating stars like the sun.

''The detection of HD85512b is far from the limit of HARPS and demonstrated the possibility of discovering other super-Earths in the habitable zones around stars similar to the sun,'' said Mayor, of the University of Geneva.