What method did the Kepler mission use?
Kepler searches for exoplanets using the transit method. When a planet transits (passes in front of) a star relative to the observer, it blocks a small portion of the light from the star.
How does the Kepler spacecraft detect exoplanets?
The Transit Method of Detecting Extrasolar Planets Kepler finds planets by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of a star when a planet crosses in front of it—we say the planet transits the star.
What is the purpose of the Kepler spacecraft?
About the mission Kepler was a space telescope designed to survey a portion of the Milky Way galaxy in search of exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.
How the Kepler telescope works?
Launched in 2009, Kepler orbits the sun every 371 days. As it travels, Kepler keeps itself pointed at a single patch of sky. Sensors monitor the brightness of more than 150,000 stars simultaneously, looking for telltale drops in intensity that could indicate orbiting planets.
How long will Kepler last?
Using the Sun, they could keep the spacecraft steady for 83 days at a time. The development let NASA start a new mission with the spacecraft, which it called K2. Kepler and K2 helped researchers discover that planets are incredibly common, even more common than stars.
What is Kepler’s orbit around the Sun?
Kepler’s Orbit. Kepler does not orbit the Earth, rather it orbits the Sun in concert with the Earth, slowly drifting away from Earth. Every 61 Earth years, Kepler and Earth will pass by each other. Throughout the lifetime of the mission, Kepler will point at just one place on the sky in the Cygnus-Lyra constellations.
What happened to the planets orbiting Kepler-11?
The planetary system orbiting Kepler-11, a yellow dwarf star about 2,000 light years from Earth, included six planets. NASA announced in February 2011 that these planets were larger than Earth, with the largest ones comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. In 2011, Kepler suffered at least two safe mode events.
What is the Kepler Space Telescope?
The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit.
How did Kepler find the planets?
Kepler detected planets by observing transits, or tiny dips in the brightness of a star that occur when a planet crosses in front of the star. The spacecraft was basically a single instrument — a specially designed 3-foot (1-meter) diameter aperture telescope and image sensor array — with a spacecraft built around it.