Munich, Dec 5 : Three undergraduate students, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have discovered a unique extrasolar planet, which is about five times as massive as Jupiter.

The students, Meta de Hoon, Remco van der Burg, and Francis Vuijsje, were testing a method of investigating the light fluctuations of thousands of stars in the OGLE database in an automated way.

The brightness of one of the stars was found to decrease for two hours every 2.5 days by about one percent.

Follow-up observations, taken with ESO’s (European Southern Observatory’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, confirmed that this phenomenon is caused by a planet passing in front of the star, blocking part of the starlight at regular intervals.

Munich, Dec 5 : Three undergraduate students, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, have discovered a unique extrasolar planet, which is about five times as massive as Jupiter.

The students, Meta de Hoon, Remco van der Burg, and Francis Vuijsje, were testing a method of investigating the light fluctuations of thousands of stars in the OGLE database in an automated way.

The brightness of one of the stars was found to decrease for two hours every 2.5 days by about one percent.

Follow-up observations, taken with ESO’s (European Southern Observatory’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, confirmed that this phenomenon is caused by a planet passing in front of the star, blocking part of the starlight at regular intervals.

Munich - Shares in German chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG plunged Wednesday after the group's loss widened and the company warned about a tough year ahead in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Munich-based Infineon said its net loss in the group's fourth quarter to the end of September grew to 763 million euros (963 million dollars) compared to 280 million euros in the same period last year.

Munich - German alpine ski talent Lisa-Marie Walz is out for the season a

Munich - Bayern Munich coach Juergen Klinsmann wants striker Lukas Podolski to stay and fight for his place rather than leave the German champions.

Klinsmann told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the 23-year-old striker had it easier with the German national side than at Bayern where he has failed to establish himself in his third season at the club.

"The difference is that he has recently been a first choice with the national team which has allowed him to take things in a more relaxed way," Klinsmann said.