Question

Does Kepler take pictures of the sky like Hubble? Describe in your own words how the operation of Kepler differs and why this is critical for detecting planets via the transit method.

Answer 1

Kepler never took pictures of the night sky like Hubble did because during Kepler's time, that big telescope and photographic techniques are not available.

Kepler watched the night sky for several nights through his telescope with low magnification and used to draw different celestial objects on a paper. Most of the things on those paper are basically dots, the bigger and darker the dot, the bright and distant the object is. Planets have constant brightness and lacked twinkling unlike the stars.

Kepler used to track the planets through the night sky and draw the observation on the paper. Thus, after several observations, he noticed the trajectory of the planets and later concluded that these phenomena is due to revolution of the planets around the sun. This method is used to locate the distant planets and their satellite systems.