Illustration of one of the planets identified by the Dispersed Matter Planet Project (DMPP). This is DMPP-1, a compact multi-planet system, with several super-Earth planets orbiting the bright central star. The DMPP uses signatures of absorption by circumstellar gas to identify the probable host stars of key exoplanets. The team, headed by Carole Haswell from the Open University, observed 39 stars shrouded in circumstellar gas and used radial-velocity techniques to search for evidence of exoplanets in orbit around those stars.