Kepler Mission.mpg file

The animation shows the Kepler spacecraft as it leaves the Earth to go into orbit
 around the Sun.

The spacecraft soon turns to point to the 100,000 stars in our galaxy that it will
 monitor for four years looking for planetary transits. 

We are now transported to a planetary system possibly 1000 light-years away.

Here one sees how a planet in the distant system periodically blocks some of the 
light bound for the Kepler spacecraft, signaling the presence of a planet in orbit 
around the distant star. 

The Kepler spacecraft watching those stars will record the periodic faint change in 
brightness produced by orbiting planets. The light from the stars is focussed by the 
optics onto an array of charged coupled devices (CCD), similar to every camcorder 
and digital camera.  

In this way the Kepler scientists hope to discover many hundreds of habitable 
planets. From the data the scientists can calculate the size of the planet and the 
orbit around the distant star. Some of planets may turn out to be just like Earth.


The animation was created by artist Donald Grahame

Additional details about the Kepler Mission can be found at:
http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov

Kepler jpeg images are available at: http://www.kepler.arc.nasa.gov/downloading.html