WITHIN 100 light years of our solar system are a handful of other, similar-sized star systems.
Only a couple of dozen amateur astronomers in the world have decided that 100 light years is their territory, the stars their point of interest, and possible planets around those stars their obsession.
Dennis Zambelis, of Seaham, is one of them.
He's 46, works as a pathology technician at John Hunter Hospital, is married and has kids, and some time in the next few decades he would like to find a planet circling a star far, far away.
"I'd love with a passion to find another planet around a star. It's tedious, and as an amateur you can never really hope to find one in your lifetime, but I do anyway."
His wife Michelle, who sounded like a patient and loving woman on the phone, accustomed to waving her husband off into the dark, to look at stars, said Dennis was an astronomer from the day he was born.
"We moved out to Seaham because of astronomy. The sky's darker here. I'd say it's an obsession," she said.
Dennis doesn't dispute the obsession part, but challenges the "from the day he was born" bit.
"At seven years old I was presented with a telescope. My mum bought it for me. I can remember it so clearly.
"I looked up, and something clicked. As soon as I looked at a star, even at that age, I knew it was going to change my life. I was a kid of seven with a basic telescope in my hands, and I was transported off planet earth."
The International Year of Astronomy was launched in Paris last week, with 2009 chosen because it marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observation, and drawing, of a celestial object the moon with the aid of a telescope.
On its website the International Astronomical Union said the year was "a chance to shine a spotlight on astronomy, and a chance for astronomers to communicate their excitement to the rest of the population".
Dennis Zambelis, the technical officer for Newcastle Astronomical Society, is such a person.
He remembers the first time he saw the rings of Saturn with his own eyes, and not just in photographs.
"If you find an object in the sky that you've been looking for, you might as well have discovered it yourself it's so exciting. When I first saw the rings of Saturn through a telescope, I had to phone people to tell them."
At seven he had a basic child's telescope but no idea what he was looking at.
"If you're keen the way I was, you have to learn celestial navigation. There are charts. It's all there. I had to learn the names of stars. It was an exercise in familiarising myself with the universe."
By 12 he had a more "astronomically-capable" telescope.
By the time he was earning money he was ready to spend it on equipment, to photograph what he was seeing, and later to monitor and measure objects.
At a further point again he was making his own equipment, including mirrors and optics, to become one of only a very small number of people in Australia making their own mirrors.
"It's tedious, it's a headache, it's a pain in the backside. It's all those things, but when you've taken a bit of glass and it's capable of focusing light from the end of the universe, that's a pretty amazing thing."
Finding a distant star's planet will be like "finding a moth against the sun, and the sun's reflecting light", and he won't actually ever "see" anything. His equipment takes measurements. If a planet crosses one of his stars it will be a "blip" in a measurement, which he'll match against a lot of other measurements, and then turn his measurements over to a professional astronomer for confirmation.
It doesn't put him off, but he doesn't want his passion to scare people off astronomy. Newcastle Astronomical Society is for all comers, he said.
"We have members who don't own telescopes. You don't have to be a science or maths genius, just interested."
The society has a night tour at Glenrock State Recreation Area on Wednesday. Details on its website under "news".
Dennis, the man with stars in his eyes, will be out in the dark, somewhere.
"It's the glory of discovery. There's no price on that," he said.
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