Illustration of the silhouette of the rocky planet HD 219134b as it passes in front of its star. At 21 light-years away, the planet is the closest outside of our solar system that can be seen crossing, or transiting, its star. It was discovered using the HARPS-North instrument on the Italian 3.6-meter National Galileo Telescope in the Canary Islands, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The planet, which is about 1.6 times the size of Earth, is also the nearest confirmed rocky planet outside our solar system. It orbits a star that is cooler and smaller than our sun, in a mere three days. The proximity of the planet to the star means that it would be scorching hot and not habitable. The illustration accurately depicts the calculated scale of the planet relative to its star and its location near the limb of the stellar disk at the mid-point of its transit.