WELLINGTON, May 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Two amateur New Zealand astronomers have played a central role in the discovery of one of the most distant planets ever found, local media NZPA said Wednesday.

    Astronomer Grant Christie in Auckland, and a colleague Jennie McCormick, who built an observatory at her home, used telescopes at which plenty of serious space scientists would scoff.

    The Aucklanders spent six hours over five nights in April, proving the existence of "OGLE-2005-BLG-071".

    The planet was discovered by looking for the effect of its gravitational field on light from a more distant star, called "microlensing".

    During a microlensing event, when the "lensing" star and the star providing the light source are in alignment, the source star's light is magnified about 100 times.

    The planet discovery team was made up of 33 astronomers around the world, including a Polish team based in Chile named the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, or OGLE, and Ohio State University's Professor Andrew Gould, and is being hailed as a breakthrough for the microlensing technique.

    The new planet, about 1000 times the mass of Earth, will be investigated over the next few weeks by the giant orbiting Hubble telescope, said NZPA.

    Since 1995 about 150 planets outside the solar system have beendiscovered. Enditem