Top: distant system, bottom: our system

     A team of astronomers has found a Jupiter-size planet in a circular orbit around a faint nearby star, raising intriguing prospects of finding a solar system with characteristics similar to our own.

    The planet is the second found to orbit the star 47 Ursae Majoris in the Big Dipper, also known as Ursa Major or the Big Bear.  The new planet is at least three-fourths the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star at a distance that, in our solar system, would place it beyond Mars but within the orbit of Jupiter.
     "Astronomers have detected evidence of more than 70 extrasolar planets," said Morris Aizenman, a senior science advisor at the National Science Foundation (NSF).  "Each discovery brings us closer to determining whether other planetary systems have features like those of our own."
     "For the first time we have detected two planets in nearly circular orbits around the same star," said team member DebraFischer of the University of California at Berkeley.  "Most of the 70 planets people have found to date are in bizarre solar systems, with short periods and eccentric orbits close to the star.  As our sensitivity improves we are finally seeing planets with longer 
orbital period, planetary systems that look more like our solar system."

From NSF