![]() "Because of Kepler, we know that planets are an incredibly diverse set of objects, much more diverse than we observe in our own solar system," Hertz said. Rather, it served as a sensitive photometer, continuously measuring the brightness of stars in its wide field of view, on the lookout for the tell-tale dimming that occurs when a planet passes in front of its sun as viewed from Earth.īy studying slight changes in the "light curve" produced by planetary transits - comparable to watching a flea creep across a car's headlight at a distance of 100 miles - and the timing of repeated cycles, computer analysis could tease out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits. The spacecraft's camera was not designed to take pictures like other space telescopes. Over the life of the mission, more than 100,000 of those stars were actively monitored by Kepler. Of that total, the science team picked some 300,000 that were the right age, composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Launched atop a Delta 2 rocket on March 14, 2009, Kepler was boosted into an orbit around the sun, trailing the Earth and aiming its 95-megapixel camera at a patch of sky the size of an out-stretched hand near the constellation Cygnus that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars. Now we know there are billions of planets that are rocky like the Earth and are orbiting their stars in the habitable zone, or the Goldilocks zone, where their temperatures might be conducive to water on the surface." The camera at the heart of the Kepler space telescope. that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy. "Before we launched Kepler, we didn't know if planets were common or rare in our galaxy," he said.
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