New York: Astronomers have discovered four new giant exoplanets, with masses from 2.4 to 5.5 times that of Jupiter, orbiting stars much bigger than our Sun.

The newly detected worlds are enormous and have very long orbital periods ranging from nearly two to slightly more than four Earth years. The researchers, led by Matias Jones of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, used the 1.5 m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory and the 2.2 m telescope at La Silla observatory in Chile, and the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian telescope in Australia.