The star itself is about the same mass and a little larger than the Sun — a minority in our exoplanet hunts. It’s orbited by six planets: a super-Earth and five mini-Neptunes.

After monitoring it for seven years, astronomers have discovered that all six of those planets are orbiting HD 158259 in almost perfect orbital resonance. This discovery could help us to better understand the mechanisms of planetary system formation, and how they end up in the configurations we see.