It seems the name “Kepler” carries with it a certain weight of great discovery. First Johannes Kepler, who revolutionized conceptions of the laws that govern the “celestial spheres” in our night sky, and then his name was passed onto the Kepler mission, which has, as of August 17 2012, discovered 2321 planet candidates (the fidelity of this sample was calculated by Exolab’s Tim Morton here). Only 20 years ago, the existence of exoplanets was still a hazy theory.
Like any new technology or mission, Kepler came with many other unforeseen benefits. It gave new life to the field of astreoseismology, as the ultra-precise light curves from Kepler allow us to measure the minute pulsations of certain stars. This gives us independent measurements of the density, mass and age of these stars. Much of what we know about planets comes from our knowledge of their host stars, and thus this seemingly tangential science pursuit is completely relevant to planet-finding.
|Kepler's field of view. From www.kepler.nasa.gov|