From a small observatory in Victoria’s east, Chris Stockdale spends his nights watching for something most people would never notice, the faintest flicker of light from stars hundreds of light years away. <\/p>\n
It’s the kind of work that sounds like science fiction, but for this Gippsland astronomer, it has become routine \u2014 a careful hunt for planets orbiting other suns, News.Az<\/a> reports, citing\u00a0ABC<\/a>.<\/p>\n It’s a side hustle for Mr Stockdale that began in the 1960s.<\/p>\n “I got into astronomy because of the Apollo program at the time and the Moon landings,” he said.<\/p>\n “And also there were a couple of bright comets and I remember my father getting me up at 4am to have a look at these comets that were in the sky and it was really good.<\/p>\n Mr Stockdale now operates a fully automated telescope system from a observatory in his Churchill backyard, capturing data from distant star fields.<\/p>\n The set-up includes a 320-millimetre telescope mounted on a precision tracking system, designed to stay locked onto a single patch of sky for hours at a time.<\/p>\n From that data, Mr Stockdale is looking for something extremely specific \u2014 a tiny dip in a star’s brightness as a planet passes in front of it.<\/p>\n “It was a case of which star caused the actual dip in the light that was associated with a planet crossing in front of the star, as we would see it,” he said.<\/p>\n “Just a small dip, which was typically half a per cent or 1 per cent, so not very much.”<\/p>\n Those faint changes in light are the key to finding\u00a0exoplanets\u00a0\u2014 worlds orbiting stars far beyond our solar system.<\/p>\n It is work that has propelled him into global collaborations, including NASA-linked projects, helping confirm potential planets identified by space-based surveys.<\/p>\n The astronomical analysis<\/p>\n Mr Stockdale has contributed to more than 100 scientific papers and helped confirm up to 100 exoplanets.<\/p>\n Yet he is quick to emphasise the collaborative nature of the work.<\/p>\n “There’s many people involved in actually doing the discovery and I’m sort of one of the cogs in the wheel,” he said.<\/p>\n Mr Stockdale verifies predicted targets from the ground, working through long lists of candidates that require precise timing.<\/p>\n “There’s actually this large list of the candidates and when they’ll be observable at my location,” he said.<\/p>\n When conditions are right, he captures light curves and graphs that reveal subtle changes in brightness.<\/p>\n “I do analysis to tease out the dip or assign it so I know it’s another star over there which could be an eclipsing binary as an example,” he said.<\/p>\n Some nights the signal is clear. Other times the process becomes a long puzzle.<\/p>\n “I could spend another eight or 10 hours actually looking for what’s going on,” he said.<\/p>\n Page medal recipient<\/p>\n Mr Stockdale’s work has now been formally recognised by the Astronomical Society<\/a> of Australia (ASA), which recently awarded him the 2026 Berenice and Arthur Page Medal.<\/p>\n “It makes me incredibly proud and honoured to have received it,” he said.<\/p>\n “I was sort of over the moon, literally.”<\/p>\n ASA representative and resident astronomer at Melbourne’s Scienceworks Tanya Hill said the recognition reflected just how critical Mr Stockdale’s work had become to modern space science.<\/p>\n “It’s a way for professional astronomers to really celebrate and highlight the incredible work that’s being done by amateur astronomers,” Dr Hill said.<\/p>\n “And in particular with Chris, not only has he been able to confirm so many planets, he’s co-author of a nature paper which is a pinnacle for research astronomers themselves.<\/p>\n “And I know when the committee realised that and saw the fantastic endorsements that he had from the collaborations with the professional astronomers, it was clear that Chris was definitely a great recipient for the medal.”<\/p>\n