To an observer, a star’s brightness will decrease periodically as an orbiting body passes in front of it. This phenomenon is known as “transiting”. After years of searching for extrasolar planets using this technique, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have announced that they have finally detected the most distant extrasolar planet ever found in the constellation Sagittarius. The planet is near the centre of our Milky Way galaxy–some 5000 light-years away, which is 20 times further than the previous record holder (found via the traditional, and less sensitive, technique of measuring its gravitational pull on its parent star). Based on the 1% dimming in the star’s brightness, the new planet is roughly the size of Jupiter. The planet, called OGLE-TR-56b, is shrouded in clouds of iron atoms. It is 14 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun, orbiting its star once every 29 hours. Their achievement establishes the transit technique as the most accurate tool currently available with the potential for finding Earth-like planets in the future.