New Earth-Sized Exoplanet Found in Star's Habitable Zone

'Habitable Zone' is code for the distance from the star in which there could be liquid water; not far enough to be ice nor close enough to be steam. It is 20 light years away so traveling there and then hearing back from the probe would take some time, but it could be present a very nice target.

http://www.universetoday.com/74640/new-earth-sized-exoplanet-is-in-star’s-habitable-zone

"An enticing new extrasolar planet found using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii is just three times the mass of Earth and it orbits the parent star squarely in the middle of the star’s “Goldilocks zone,” a potential habitable region where liquid water could exist on the planet‘s surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one. The discoverers also say this finding could mean our galaxy may be teeming with prospective habitable planets.

“Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet,” said Steven Vogt from UC Santa Cruz. “The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common.”

Vogt and his team from the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey actually found two new planets around the heavily studied red dwarf star Gliese 581, where planets have been found previously. Now with six known planets, Gliese 581 hosts a planetary system most similar to our own. It is located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra.

The most interesting of the two new planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to four times that of the Earth and an orbital period of just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with likely enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere.

The planet is also tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star in sunlight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet’s surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet’s surface would be on the terminator, the line between shadow and light, with surface temperatures decreasing toward the dark side and increasing toward the light side.

“Any emerging life forms would have a wide range of stable climates to choose from and to evolve around, depending on their longitude,” Vogt said."