{"id":3330,"date":"2009-08-07T10:00:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-07T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2009-08-07T10:00:05","modified_gmt":"2009-08-07T15:00:05","slug":"brahe-had-a-sponsor-kepler-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3330","title":{"rendered":"Brahe had a Sponsor.  Kepler Works."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2009\/08\/06\/kepler-works\/\">Bad Astronomy:  Kepler works!<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The bottom plot is the same thing but zoomed in to see more detail. That second dip is a lot more obvious. It\u2019s not another planet blocking starlight, which is what you might first guess. It\u2019s actually the light from the planet being blocked by the star!<\/p>\n<p>The planet is reflecting light from the star, just like the Moon reflects sunlight, allowing us to see it. When the planet passes behind the star, we don\u2019t see that light anymore, so the total light from the system drops a wee bit. It\u2019s not much, and totally impossible to see from the ground, but <em>Kepler was able to spot it.<\/em> And that\u2019s critical, because it turns out this dip is about the same thing we\u2019d expect to see if a planet the size of the Earth were to pass in front of the star. In other words, the drop in light from a giant planet going <em>behind<\/em> its star is about the same as we\u2019d expect from a smaller planet passing in <em>front<\/em> of the star.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that Kepler spied this dip at all means that, if somewhere out there an Earthlike world is orbiting a star, Kepler will be able to detect it!<\/p>\n<p>Incredible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is pretty cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad Astronomy: Kepler works! The bottom plot is the same thing but zoomed in to see more detail. That second dip is a lot more obvious. It\u2019s not another planet blocking starlight, which is what you might first guess. It\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3330\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}