'Bulge' yields new planet class

Astronomers have discovered a new class of planets that take less than a day to whiz round their parent stars.

Observations with the Hubble Space Telescope revealed the existence of the planets, which orbit closer to their stars than any previously known.

Dr Kailash Sahu and colleagues report finding the planets in a faint, crowded star field in a region of the Milky Way known as the galactic bulge.