A study recently published in The Astrophysical Journal reveals the discovery of an “ice giant” planet, with similar characteristics to our own Uranus, located 25,000 light years away.

Nature World News reports that this new planet may be an unlikely twin of Uranus, which is composed primarily of ice particles, hydrogen, and helium, and has an unusual elliptical orbit of 99 degrees axial tilt. While the new planet is too far away to determine similar axis tilt and exact composition, astronomers are confident in their measurements for similarity.

The new discovery may help researchers understand the origins of ice giants in our solar system. “Nobody knows for sure why Uranus and Neptune are located on the outskirts of our solar system, when our models suggest that they should have formed closer to the sun,” said co-author Andrew Gould, professor of astronomy at Ohio State University (OSU), in a recent statement.

“One idea is that they did form much closer, but were jostled around by Jupiter and Saturn and knocked farther out. Maybe the existence of this Uranus-like planet is connected to interference from the second star. Maybe you need some kind of jostling to make planets like Uranus and Neptune.”

According to the statement, the binary star system lies in our Milky Way galaxy, with the first star approximately two-thirds as big as our sun and the second star one-sixth the size. The new planet is four times as big as Uranus, orbiting the first star at almost the same distance that Uranus orbits our sun.

Researchers of the study, led by Radek Poleski of OSU, calculated the masses of the two stars and the planet, along with their distances from one another, using a process called microlensing, when “the gravity of a star focuses the light from a more distant star and magnifies it like a lens,” according to OSU.

“Only microlensing can detect these cold ice giants that, like Uranus and Neptune, are far away from their host stars. This discovery demonstrates that microlensing is capable of discovering planets in very wide orbits,” said Poleski. “We were lucky to see the signal from the planet, its host star, and the companion star. If the orientation had been different, we would have seen only the planet, and we probably would have called it a free-floating planet.”