Super-Earth at HD 97658, Neptune at GJ 785

The NASA-UC Eta-Earth Program: III. A Super-Earth orbiting HD 97658 and a Neptune-mass planet orbiting Gl 785
http://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0414

Quote :

We report the discovery of planets orbiting two bright, nearby early K dwarf stars, HD 97658 and Gl 785. These planets were detected by Keplerian modelling of radial velocities measured with Keck-HIRES for the NASA-UC Eta-Earth Survey. HD 97658 b is a close-in super-Earth with minimum mass Msini = 8.2 +/- 1.2 M_Earth, orbital period P = 9.494 +/- 0.005 d, and an orbit that is consistent with circular. Gl 785 b is a Neptune-mass planet with Msini = 21.6 +/- 2.0 M_Earth, P = 74.39 +/- 0.12 d, and orbital eccentricity 0.30 +/- 0.09. Photometric observations with the T12 0.8 m automatic photometric telescope at Fairborn Observatory show that HD 97658 is photometrically constant at the radial velocity period to 0.09 mmag, supporting the existence of the planet.

Finally a Neptune planet around a Solar neighbour (HR 7722)!

That star was so lacking of any exoplanet hints. Research papers only concerning metallicity

So we've found out the identities of Candidates 3 and 7 from the recent Eta Earth planet frequency announcement. Two down, ten more to go...

So it looks like there are lots of planets in the region of parameter space where there are supposed to be very few objects. I suspect this may be because the formation models predict the results of planet formation for single-planet systems, while low-mass planets have a tendency to be in multi-planet systems.

Maybe Sigma Draconis will be one of the next