Unlocking the Secrets of Transit Graph Occultation

Kepler measures the brightness of stars. The data will look like an EKG showing the heartbeat. Whenever a planet passes in front of its parent star as viewed from the spacecraft, a tiny pulse or beat is produced. From the repeated beatings we can detect and verify the existence of Earth-size planets and learn about the orbit and size of the planet. The scientific data from Kepler come in a different way than most astronomy missions. The Kepler spacecraft will not produce pretty pictures or even colourful spectrograms, but relatively light curves derived from brightness changes collected from transits. Credit: NASA Ames and Dana Berry