Qatari astronomer Khalid Al Subai announced the international team’s discovery, saying it “demonstrates Qatar’s commitment to becoming a leader in innovative science and research.”

Since 2009, wide-angle cameras in New Mexico have regularly captured high resolution images of the night sky and beamed them to team for analysis.

Reports the Peninsula newspaper:

The resulting data confirmed the existence of a planet now called Qatar-2b, orbiting an orange Type K star 500 light-years away. Qatar-2b is a gas giant 20 percent larger than Jupiter in diameter and 2.5 more massive. It belongs to the ‘hot Jupiter’ family because it orbits 3.5 million kilometer from its star – only six stellar radii away. The planet roasts at a temperature of around 1,100 degrees Centigrade.

The Exoplanet Survey team made its first planetary discovery earlier in the year, finding planet Qatar-1b.