http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/04/17/possibly-habitable-earth-sized-planet-discovered
April 17, 2014 - Discover Magazine blog
Exoplanets are fun and all, but those hot Jupiters and super Neptunes
and such are kind of beside the point. Everyone knows the real search
is for a planet like ours: rocky, smallish, and capable of hosting
liquid water. And now scientists have found one, named Kepler-186f — an
Earth-sized planet in its star’s habitable zone, the area where
conditions aren’t too hot or too cold, but just right, for liquid water
to be possible.
The planet orbits a star about 500 light-years away called Kepler-186 and was discovered by the Kepler telescope (and then confirmed at the Keck and Gemini
Observatories). The discovery technically includes four other
exoplanets found around the star, but Kepler-186f is the only one in the
habitable zone. Scientists found them all using the “transit method,”
which is just basically looking at stars and waiting for planets to pass
in front, dimming the star’s light a little bit.
...