A team led by Bulgarian scientists has discovered a new super-Earth exoplanet

An international team led by Bulgarian scientists has announced the discovery of a new super-Earth exoplanet orbiting the star GJ 1137. The Bulgarian exoplanet search group within the EXO-RESTART project is part of the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Physics of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”.

The discovery was made as a result of an analysis of the star’s long-period magnetic activity and has been accepted for publication in the prestigious international journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The lead author of the study is young scientist Denitsa Stoeva, a doctoral student in the Department of Astronomy at the Faculty of Physics of Sofia University.

The exoplanet is named Macondo after the town of the same name in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”.