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It was a Friday afternoon, Aug. 31 of last year, that Eric Agol, a 42-year-old associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, looked at his computer screen and saw something astounding.

The algorithm Agol had put together and run had found an Earthlike planet 1,200 light-years away.

It was orbiting its own sun, in a "habitable zone," nicknamed the "Goldilocks zone," meaning its temperatures are suitable for liquid water. And possibly life.

You could say Agol's work puts him at the crossroads of some complex questions, which he answers with faith.

These days, astronomers don't really peer through giant telescopes.

They look at computer data.

This new planet - 40 percent bigger than Earth, with a 267-day year-showed up as a dip in a bunch of dots across the screen. The dip was from a shadow created as the planet crossed the star it was circling.

Agol's finding had been missed by the numerous other scientists studying the digital information from NASA's orbiting Kepler telescope, named for 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler and launched in 2009 specifically to discover stars in our galaxy that are orbited by habitable, Earth-size planets.

Agol is a low-key guy, but he admits, "I definitely was excited."

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Faith helped steer astronomy professor who made planet discovery