Sentences with phrase «detects small dips»

The orbiting probe detects small dips in the brightness of a star that occur when a planet crosses its face.

It is being done by the people who launched the Kepler satellite to detect small dips in the brightness of distant stars in order to detect the presence of now ~ 1000 new planets in the last several years, completely re-writing the textbooks on the parameter space of planetary atmospheres, solar system formation, etc..

Not exact matches

Seeing transits is not enough; periodic dips in a star's light could be caused by a small companion star too dim to detect directly.

That parts - per - million sensitivity should allow Corot to detect the dips in a star's light caused by a transiting planet with a radius just twice that of Earth — and perhaps an even smaller one, provided its orbit is tighter than Mercury's, so that the planet completes three transits during the 150 - day viewing period.

But with needle - in - haystack projects, I always wonder whether they saw nothing because there was nothing to detect or because they missed the rare and transient brightness dips that small KBOs would cause.»

They can detect brightness dips as small as 1 %, which is sufficient to find giant gaseous planets that are like our own Jupiter and Saturn.