A Strange New World?

Following the BBC Stargazing Live programmes with Professor Brian Cox promoting amateur astronomy, I decided to check out the www.planethunters.org website that Dr. Chris Lintott promoted on Monday evening's show: a website that allows the public to access data from the Kepler satellite and get involved in the search for possible exoplanets in our galaxy.

As part of the search, I had downloaded data from SPH10054774, a dwarf star cooler, redder and smaller than our Sun; the data would seem to suggest regular periods of dimming which may be the result of a world passing in front of the star.

It's quite an exciting feeling to think that one could your family's own William Herschel, the workplace Tombaugh, stood behind Adams and Le Verrier in the bus queue on a cold morning - the thrill of helping to discover new worlds in the cosmos.

It could be you!