The Kepler Mission
The transit method has been very successful in the search for exoplanets. Almost 2,400 orbiting objects discovered by NASA’s Kepler telescope have been confirmed as exoplanets, with more than 2,000 remaining as candidates to be studied. Kepler has located exoplanets by monitoring a small region of the sky to find evidence of changes in the brightness of stars. The Kepler mission completely changed our understanding of exoplanets.
View the slideshow to see the light curves for the Kepler mission’s first five exoplanet discoveries.
Did you notice that the orbital periods for these planets are very short? They are less than one Earth week! (Even Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun in our solar system, has an orbital period of 88 days.) When using the transit method, it is easier to observe an exoplanet with a short orbital period. Planets that take years or decades to complete an orbit are less likely to be observed and harder to confirm. After a potential planet has been located using the transit method, astronomers use other instruments and techniques to confirm it as an exoplanet.
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