In Brief:

(CNN) -- High school students studying cosmic X-ray and radio wave emissions have discovered strong evidence of a neutron star in the remnant of a nearby supernova, NASA said this week.

The trio detected a young and rapidly pulsating neutron star 5,000 light years away while looking at data from NASA's X-ray observatory Chandra.

They confirmed the sighting of the pulsar using data from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico.

Charles Olbert, 18, Christopher Clarfield, 18 and Nikolas Williams, 16, all students at the North Carolina School for Science and Mathematics, had access to the observatory findings because a teacher had applied for Chandra observation time while associated with NASA.

"The students really went through the whole analysis process themselves," said science teacher Jonathan Keohane in a statement. "They even lived together all summer near the school to complete the research."

Olbert called the discovery, which earned first place this year at the Siemens-Westinghouse science competition, "one of the most rewarding experiences I ever had."

(CNN) -- Scientists have discovered three planets around nearby stars, including one in an orbit inside the "habitable zone" where liquid water could exist.

But don't expect terrestrial life to inhabit the planets, all within 150 light years of our solar system. They are gas giants with masses comparable to Jupiter, said a team of international researchers.

The smallest, slightly smaller than Jupiter, is scorchingly close to its parent star, closer than Mercury is to the sun. The middle-weight one orbits roughly the same distance from its star than the Earth does from ours. It takes 426 days to complete a revolution.

The largest, at least 1.86 times the mass of Jupiter, has an orbit that extends a little further than Mars.

Almost 50 planets outside the solar system have been detected since 1995. The latest, found using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia, are the first to be discovered from the Southern Hemisphere continent.

None of the new planets has been seen directly. They were detected through a gravitational effect on their host stars known as "Doppler wobble."

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