Citizen astronomers discover new worlds like our own

Citizen astronomers have discovered a seven planet solar system in the 'Kepler field' in a part of space known as KOI-351.

According to a scientific paper, published by Cornell University Library, the system "bears some resemblance to our own solar system, with the inner five planets ranging from Earth to mini-Neptune radii and the outer planets being gas giants".

The Planet Hunters citizen science programme reported the "discovery of 14 new transiting planet candidates in the Kepler field", which were missed by the so-called "Kepler Transit Planet Search (TPS) algorithm".

The programme was set up to allow volunteers to trawl through vast amounts of public data from Nasa's Kepler space telescope.