Stargazing viewer in planet coup
Stargazing viewer in planet coup By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News Amateur astronomer Chris Holmes form Peterborough stumbled upon SPH10066540 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 in