A telescope developed by Indian researchers and fitted with an optics system has been used by astronomers to discover a massive planet residing in a four star system 136 light-years away from Earth.

The discovery is significant as it is only the second time that the astronomers have succeeded in identifying a quadruple star system. It is notable that the planet was known before, it was thought to have only three stars, not four.

The researchers said that the findings would help them understand how multiple star systems can influence the development and fate of planets.

The discoveries were made using instruments fitted to telescopes at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego: the Robo-AO adaptive optics system, developed by the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and the PALM-3000 adaptive optics system, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and Caltech.

In 2013, the first four-star planet, KIC 4862625, was discovered by citizen scientists using public data from NASA's Kepler mission.

"About four per cent of solar-type stars are in quadruple systems, which is up from previous estimates because observational techniques are steadily improving," said co-author Andrei Tokovinin of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

The newfound four-star planetary system is named called 30 Ari and it is located 136 light-years away in the constellation Aries.

The gaseous planet of the system has 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and it orbits its primary star every 335 days.