Found: 32 new planets outside solar system

European astronomers announced Monday the discovery of 32 new planets outside our solar system, bringing the number of known exoplanets to more than 400.

The newly found planets include six that have a mass of only a few times the size of the Earth, an encouraging sign in the quest for Earth-like worlds that could harbor life.

The discovery was made with the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher or HARPS, a spectrograph for the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) 3.6-metre telescope at La Silla, Chile.

Xinhua