A mechanic from Australia, Andrew Grey, has helped discover four planets orbiting a star as part of a crowd-sourcing project. After a small tutorial on hunting exoplanets, over seven thousand volunteers classified about 1.5 million points of interest. The discovery of the four-planet system was confirmed within 48 hours of the initiation of the project using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope's data.

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Andrew Grey, a 26-year-old man from Darwin, participated in the Stargazers Live event which was broadcast over three nights on the ABC this week. The event allowed budding astronomers to hunt for exoplanets from the data observations of more than 100,000 stars by the Nasa Kepler space telescope, downloaded onto the Zooniverse website.

The four new planets that Grey observed are about six hundred light years from Earth and were previously unknown to scientists. Grey said it was an "amazing" experience being a part of the event. He would be listed as an author on the report to be written about the important discovery. Describing himself an "amateur astronomer," Grey said that this is his first scientific publication.

The four planets are a little more than twice the size of Earth and orbit a star about 90 percent of our sun's mass. Professor Chris Lintott from Oxford University said that this new solar system is in a very compact configuration. He added that it is nothing like our solar system because the planets are very close together.

Lintott said only a handful of known solar systems that are similar to the one discovered, and that its discovery could assist scientists to find out how planets formed. He added that the "resonance" detected in the different speeds of orbits of the four planets shows that it is a stable system and that even though they are crammed together, their gravity does not send them shooting off which means we may find other planets out there.

During the crowdfunding exercise, more than 90 new planets were found, of which this was the "most exciting" discovery. Professor Brian Cox, who hosted the three-part show alongside Julia Zemiro, said it was the most significant discovery ever made during a Stargazing Live event. "The results are a wonderful and intriguing surprise," he said.