Astronomers using Santa Clara County's Lick Observatory have discovered more planets orbiting a star outside the solar system than have ever been found before, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Tuesday.

The newly discovered planet is the fifth confirmed to be orbiting the star 55 Cancri, which is located approximately 41 light years away in the constellation Cancer. Never before have more than four planets been confirmed orbiting a star outside the solar system.

The new discovery is visible with binoculars, according to NASA.

The planet weighs about 45 times the mass of Earth and may be similar to Saturn in its composition and appearance. The planet is the fourth from 55 Cancri and completes one orbit every 260 days.

Its location places the planet in a zone around the star where the temperature would permit liquid water to pool on solid surfaces.

The distance from its star is approximately 116.7 million kilometers (72.5 million miles), slightly closer than Earth to our sun, but it orbits a star that is slightly fainter, according to NASA.

"The gas-giant planets in our solar system all have large moons," San Francisco State University astronomy professor Debra Fischer said. "If there is a moon orbiting this new, massive planet, it might have pools of liquid water on a rocky surface."

Fischer is the lead author of a paper describing the planet's discovery that will appear in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal, a scientific journal.

"Discovering these five planets took us 18 years of continuous observations at Lick Observatory, starting before any extrasolar planets were known anywhere in the universe," said University of California, Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy, who contributed to the paper. "But finding five extrasolar planets orbiting a star is only one small step. Earth-like planets are the next destination."

The astronomers also used Hawaii's Keck Observatory to confirm the planet's existence, according to NASA.