Of course, there’s no way to tell if it actually has an atmosphere with modern instruments, and atmosphere is a critical ingredient here. Since HD85512b is orbiting on the inner portion of the goldilocks zone, it is more akin to Venus than to Earth in the amount of solar energy it’s taking on. But scientists speculate that cloud cover of fifty percent or more could offset that proximity enough to allow life to thrive--albeit a kind of life more suited to a balmy, hot environment (relative to Earth’s).
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article…
HD 85512 b (also referred as Gliese 370 b is an extrasolar planet orbiting the star HD 85512 approximately 36 light-years away in the constellation of Vela. The planet was discovered by the scientists at University of Geneva, Switzerland, led by the Swiss astronomer Stéphane Udry of the GTO program of High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), a high-precision echelle spectrograph installed on ESO's 3.6m telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. HD 85512 b is one of the smallest exo-planets discovered to be in the habitable zone.
On August 17, 2011, researchers released a study of the planet, concluding that HD 85512 b is the most habitable exoplanet discovered till then and one of the most stable exo-planets discovered by the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher. The planet has a minimum Earth mass of 3.6 ± 0.5 and an estimated temperature of 298 K (25 C or 77 F) at the top of its atmosphere. The estimated temperature is noted to be similar to temperatures in South France, but various atmospheric conditions prevalent in the planet have to be analyzed to estimate the temperature of the surface. It orbits the parent star at a distance of about 0.26 AU, with an orbital period of about 54 days.
For the temperature to be below 270 K, for a circular orbit, the planetary albedo should be 0.48 ± 0.05 and for an eccentricity of 0.11, the planetary albedo should be 0.52. If the planet has 50% cloud cover, water may exist in liquid form in the planet provided its atmosphere is similar to our own and the planet would be considered habitable. Also, if the albedo of the planet is increased due to cloud cover in the planet, water could be present in its liquid form in the planet, which would mean that, the planet is on the edge of habitability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_85512_b