NOTE! Is this our 'politically correct' introduction to Planet X? Was that premature 'leak' to gigi from the French contingent of this group? Is this the message 'cleaned up' for our consumption (so the natives don't get too restless)? Interesting questions, especially in light of these points.
1) one is...a planet around a sun-like star in an Earth-like orbit.(habitable)
2) specimen is a giant similar in size to Jupiter
3) Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune all have multiple moons, some of which are thought to harbor saltwater oceans. (Did everyone else know this but this Poster?)
4) the Haute-Provence Observatory in France...took part in the planetary hunt.

READ ON:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/04/05/new.planets/index.html

11 new planets discovered; one in 'life zone'

Could the moon of a giant planet in an Earth-like orbit harbor life?

April 5, 2001

Web posted at: 11:29 a.m. EDT (1529 GMT)

By Richard Stenger
CNN

(CNN) -- An international team of astronomers this week announced the discovery of 11 distant planets, pushing the number of known planets outside the solar system to 63.

The latest finds include a planet that orbits twice as fast as a sibling planet, a planet with the most elongated orbit detected so far, and a planet around a sun-like star in an Earth-like orbit.

The last is located in a so-called "habitable zone," where terrestrial temperatures are possible. In such an orbit, the conditions would be ideal for the presence of liquid water, a necessary ingredient for known life. specimen is a giant similar in size to Jupiter

"It may be orbited by one or more moons on which a more bio-friendly environment has evolved," the European Southern Observatory said in a statement Wednesday.

"The presence of natural satellites around giant extra-solar planets is not a far-fetched idea. Just look at our solar system," the statement said. The giant planets Saturn, Jupiter and Neptune all have multiple moons, some of which are thought to harbor saltwater oceans.

One of the new planets was the second detected in a system with three stars. Any observer standing on the planet would get plenty of light, at times seeing three suns in the sky, astronomers said.

Besides the ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile, the Haute-Provence Observatory in France and the Keck telescopes in Hawaii took part in the planetary hunt.

The first of the so-called "exoplanets" were observed only six years go, using ground-based telescopes to measure the wobble such bodies produce as they orbit their host stars. None of the new planets has been observed directly.

Astronomers anticipate the discovery of much smaller planets, perhaps terrestrial-sized ones, when more powerful observatories and satellites expand the search within the decade.