Scientists believe they have found three planets in another solar system with a "tremendous" possibility of sustaining life, CNN reported.

Astronomers discovered the star system and said it could contain as many as seven planets, three of which could theoretically sustain life. They are in a "habitable zone," which is an area of a solar system in which planets could hold liquid water.

In our solar system, Earth is in the middle of it while Venus and Mars are just outside it. One scientist said the possibility of one of these three new planets being able to sustain life is "tremendous."

Guillem Anglada-Escude of the University of Gottingen, Germany, led the team of astronomers and said there have never been so many planets in a single habitable zone discovered at once.

The discovery was published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"As soon as our telescopes and data analysis tools have become sophisticated enough to find them, habitable planets are popping up everywhere," said Sara Seager, professor of planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the study. "It's simply exhilarating to know that potentially habitable planets are ubiquitous."

The team dubbed the planets "super-Earths" because they are all between four and eight times the mass of Earth. They belong to a system that orbits a star called Gilese 667C, part of the triple-star system Gilese 667.

Gilese 667C is about one-third the mass of our sun and is lee bright, but the planets orbiting it are much closer than Earth is to the sun.

"It's an extreme scaled down version of the solar system," Anglada-Escude said.

The three habitable planets are a mere 22 light years away from Earth, much closer than any previously reported habitable planets. NASA's Kepler satellite discovered habitable planets 2,700 light years away. In comparison, the newest trio is much closer, but 22 light years translates to 129 trillion miles.

The team's discovery can be spotted at night in the Scorpius constellation.

"Whether the planets are actually habitable would be pure speculation," Seager said. "There's currently no way to observe surface liquid water (our habitability requirement) or even infer the presence of surface liquid water."