Transit graph

Transit graph

Kepler measures the brightness of stars.

The data will look like an EKG showing the heart beat.

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 beats 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 colorful spectrograms, but rather light curves derived from brightness changes collected from transits.

Credit: NASA Ames and Dana Berry