Thursday, January 19, 2012

Stargazing Amateur Astronomer: Detecting a new planet

The public push initiated on BBC Two's Stargazing Live series to find planets beyond our Solar System has had an immediate result.

A viewer who answered the call has helped spot a world that appears to be circling a star dubbed SPH10066540.

The planet is described as being similar in size to our Neptune and circles its parent every 90 days.

Chris Holmes from Peterborough found it by looking through time-lapsed images of stars on Planethunters.org.

The website hosts data gathered by Nasa's Kepler space telescope, and asks volunteers to sift the information for anything unusual that might have been missed in a computer search.

"I've never had a telescope. I've had a passing interest in where things are in the sky, but never had any more knowledge about it than that," Mr Holmes told BBC News.

"Being involved in a project like this and actually being the one to find something is a very exciting position."

Chris Lintott from Oxford University who helps organise Planethunters.org added: "We're ecstatic. We've been groaning under the strain of all these people who want to help us, which is exactly how it should be."

The public participation project was launched last year, but it got a huge fillip when it was featured in the popular Stargazing series' return to BBC Two on Monday.

Volunteers have tripled to more than 100,000 people, and the number of images inspected has now reached a million.

The new planet candidate's status will need more checking, but it looks strong, said Dr Lintott.

"It would be our fifth detection since we started and our first British one as well," he added.

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