I have trouble processing the fact that all of these planets and stars have to be perfectly aligned with earth for Kepler to spot them.
Methods of detecting exoplanets
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
direct imaging
microlensing
transit
timing
radial velocity
Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it.
In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of detecting such a faint light source, the light from the parent star causes a glare that washes it out. For those reasons, very few of the extrasolar planets reported as of April 2014 have been observed directly, with even fewer being resolved from their host star.
Instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar planets.
As of 2016, several different indirect methods have yielded success.
Contents
1 Established detection methods
1.1 Radial velocity
1.2 Transit photometry
1.2.1 Technique, advantages, and disadvantages
1.2.2 History
1.3 Reflection/Emission Modulations
1.4 Relativistic beaming
1.5 Ellipsoidal variations
1.6 Pulsar timing
1.7 Variable star timing
1.8 Transit timing
1.9 Transit duration variation
1.10 Eclipsing binary minima timing
1.11 Gravitational microlensing
1.12 Direct imaging
1.12.1 Early discoveries
1.12.2 Imaging instruments
1.13 Polarimetry
1.14 Astrometry
2 Other possible methods
2.1 Transit imaging
2.2 Magnetospheric radio emissions
2.3 Auroral radio emissions
2.4 Modified interferometry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_exoplanets