An icy planet found orbiting a star at the same distance Earth orbits the sun is the latest discovery in scientists' quest to understand planetary systems outside of our own.

The planet, named , but that and its distance from its star is where the similarities stop, according to a release on the discovery. Because its star is so faint, the planet is likely too cold to accommodate life as we know it.

"This 'iceball' planet is the lowest-mass planet ever found through microlensing," study lead author Yossi Shvartzvald saidin therelease.

The process of microlensing locates distant objects by using background stars the way one would use a flashlight.

" lined up behind it," NASA researchers wrote. "That's because the gravitational field of the foreground star bends and focuses light, like a glass lens bending and focusing starlight in a telescope."

(MORE:)

The planet is almost 13,000 light-years away from Earth and orbits a star so tiny that the researchers are unsure whether it’s a star or a brown dwarf – a star-like object with a core that’s not hot enough to generate energy through nuclear fusion.

According to the researchers, though there are a handful of planetary systems outside of ours with well-defined distances, the lack of detection with the Spitzer telescope suggests planets may be less common towardthe center of our galaxy.

They hope to use to detect planets even smaller than OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb. It’s scheduled to be operational in the mid-2020s.

"One of the problems with estimating how many planets like this are out there is that we have reached the lower limit of planet masses that we can currently detect with microlensing," Shvartzvald said. "WFIRST will be able to change that."

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Exoplanets

At a Glance

Scientists have discovered an "iceball" planet with the same mass as the Earth.They say the planet may be too cold for life as we know it to exist.