Without amateur data, two recent exoplanet discoveries would not have been made.

By Robert Naeye

JUST 20 YEARS AGO, astronomers didn't know of a single planet outside our solar system. For all we knew, the Sun's retinue of planets was an extreme rarity in the cosmos. The thought that amateurs might someday make valuable contributions to exoplanet research would have seemed preposterous to many scientists.

Yet not only have amateurs routinely detected dozens of exoplanets through a variety of methods, they're now playing a vital role in discovering and characterising them, as exemplified by two recent discoveries.

Read the rest of this article in the February/March issue of Australian Sky & Telescope.