In between all those games to watch at the Euro 2008, I just wanted to give a quick post on some cool astronomy news that has been popping up all over the place the last few days.

There is no reason for me to try to explain something that is explained perfectly well in the ESO press release, but as the title suggests, ESO astronomers have detected 3 super-Earths (planets with masses from 1-14 Earth masses) in a nearby solar system. Now don’t get your hopes to high, as these planets are all too close to their star to be a nice place for life as we know it, but as they also point out in the article, this is a really good indication that there are a lot of rocky planets out there, and with every new telescope or detector, we get one step closer to being able to detect even smaller planets in even better orbits.

But once again, go read the announcement.
Among more mainstream news sites, the Bad Astronomer has of course also covered this.