It was discovered using Nasa's Kepler telescope which is on board the Kepler spacecraft.

The planet was first noted as a potential transit event by the Kepler telescope, and was originally designated as KOI 10.01.

Kepler-8b was the fifth planet discovered by the Kepler telescope.

In 2012 Johnson's team discovered three exoplanets, including the smallest one found to date, orbiting a red dwarf using the Kepler orbital telescope.

Kepler telescope, however has a more specific mission - to discover hundreds of terrestrial planets which are defined as exoplanets that are one half to twice the size of the Earth.

Kepler-10b's discovery was based on eight months of data collected with the Kepler telescope from May 2009 to January 2010.

By May 15, 2013, two reaction wheels in the Kepler telescope had failed.

There may be many more, and the Kepler telescope is currently searching for planets around orange dwarf stars.

The Kepler telescope might be sensitive enough to detect them.

And now the journal Science reports that the Kepler telescope has found a planet that orbits two suns, like Tatooine in "Star Wars."