This artist's animation depicts 55 Cancri e as it orbits its star. The planet whips around the star closely and quickly: It is 25 times closer to the star than Mercury is to our sun and completes one orbit -- its year -- in a mere 18 hours.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets.
