So imagine Cindy Foote's reaction when she helped discover two new planets.

"It's just so exciting," the Kanab woman said of the discovery, which was announced last week in Honolulu at the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting.

Foote, an amateur astronomer, never expected to be part of a 16-person team of professional and amateur astronomers searching for new planets in an effort called the XO Project.

She and her husband, Jerry, own a telescope-building company called ScopeCraft Inc. and have attended astronomy meetings for decades. He studied physics and has worked in astronomy for 20 years, but she only became interested after attending a meeting in 2004 where she learned about exoplanets - planets that orbit stars other than the Sun.

"I just sat there and was stunned. It was the most surprising thing I'd ever heard," said Foote, who is formally trained in marketing. "I knew that's the area of science I wanted to pursue."

So, she refined her skill at photometry - the science of precisely measuring changes in starlight - and began studying the photometry of a previously discovered exoplanet.

In 2006, she met the discoverer of that planet and submitted her data, ultimately grabbing the attention of Peter McCullough, who leads the XO Project. He was impressed by her work, and asked her to join.

The team has two cameras at the Haleakala observatory in Hawaii to monitor fluctuations in starlight. The professionals on the team pore over that data, then send amateurs on the team a list of specific stars to monitor.

The team uses a fairly unusual technique to discover exoplanets. Typically, astronomers track the wobble in surrounding stars' gravitational fields to determine if a planet is orbiting.

However, 13 of the known 242 exoplanets were discovered using the transit method, which tracks the dimming of starlight that occurs when a planet passes in front of it, Foote said.

That method led to countless nights spent peering through her 16-inch, research-grade telescope located at the Vermillion Cliffs Observatory outside Kanab, documenting the timing of dim periods of certain stars to make sure there is a regularly orbiting planet.

Patrick Wiggins, NASA's solar system ambassador for Utah, is happy to see amateurs such as Foote get involved with the emerging science of finding planets.

"People with her equipment, which by professional standards is modest, would have been laughed at by the pros 10 years ago. But now, the pros are realizing amateurs have some pretty good stuff. They're dedicated and they have the time, which is something the pros don't have on the few big telescopes," he said.

Although Foote works on a 16-inch telescope instead of a 10-meter one, she was able to help prove the existence of two planets: XO-2b and XO-3b. XO-2b is the size of Jupiter and X0-3b is 12 times the size of Jupiter. Both orbit near their star, making them too hot for life.

"To find a planet is incredible, but to find one that has life is what everyone is looking for," Wiggins said. "Finding a planet with water is the Holy Grail of planet searching."

That's what keeps Foote up at nights, volunteering her time squinting through a telescope.

"The ultimate goal is to find a planet that is earthlike that harbors life," she said. "If we can find that planet, and if I can be instrumental to finding it, that's amazing."

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SHEENA MCFARLAND can be contacted at smcfarland@sltrib.com or 801-257-8619.