Mark Hadley, who has discovered a planet using information received on his laptop

by Lauren Fruen

lfruen@thekmgroup.co.uk

Faversham stargazer Mark Hadley is certainly not a waste of space – the amateur astronomer thinks he may have discovered a new planet.

The father-of-two noticed the potential planet after looking at the brightness of stars in the sky.

By analysing the light output of a star Mark is able to tell if a new planet is passing by. If the star appears to loose brightness it could mean an undiscovered planet has just crossed the star’s path.

Mark, who lives with his family in Ashford Road, made the startling discovery after joining Planet Hunters - a project set up to help sieve through data taken by the NASA Kepler space mission.

"this is a planet candidate. the scientists at oxford university will now have to look at it to see if it is actually a planet" – stargazer mark hadley

He said: “This is a planet candidate. The scientists at Oxford University will now have to look at it to see if it is actually a planet but it looks to be same size as Jupiter.

“This is a hobby of mine so it was quite a shock when I actually found something! I do not use telescope, it is about looking at the patterns in the sky. In fact I do it all from my armchair in Faversham. I have looked at 3,000 data sets but there are several million.

“I am part of a team who spotted this change and we just have to wait to hear whether it is a planet or not now.”

The Planet Hunters project is a collaboration between Yale University and the Zooniverse.

The online resource allows the public to look at data collected through a satellite and it has been measuring the brightness of 160,000 stars every 30 minutes for the last four years.

Now Mark, an engineer, who has lived in Faversham for 19 years, even believes moons orbiting the planet could support human life.

He added: “It is the right distance from the star to support liquid but this is unlikely as it is a gas giant.

"However, if there are moons orbiting the planet then they could well support water and that could support life.”