WELLINGTON, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Researchers in New Zealand have made the initial measurements of the smallest planet found outside the solar system, the New Zealand Press Association reported on Saturday.

    Using the new MOA-II telescope at the Mt John Observatory, near Temuka in South Canterbury, they found the planet outside the solar system which is three times bigger than Earth.

    More than 300 planets have been found outside the solar system, and the latest is the smallest planet orbiting a normal star, which is as little as one 20th the mass of the Earth's sun.

    "It turns out that the lowest mass ones are the ones that would be easiest to search for evidence of life on other planets," the leader of the international search team, David Bennett, of the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement.

    The research would be published in the September issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

    The tiny star is a "brown dwarf" 3,000 light years from Earth.

    "No planets have previously been found to orbit stars with masses less than about 20 percent that of the Sun, but this finding indicates that even the smallest stars can host planets," he said.