Conceptual drawing of the Kepler Space Observatory
Kepler is a space observatory planned by NASA that will search for extrasolar planets. For this purpose, it will observe the brightness of about 100,000 stars over several years to detect periodical occultations of a star by one of its planets. Kepler will not be in an Earth orbit but in an Earth-trailing solar orbit so that Earth will not occult the stars which are to be observed and the photometer will not be influenced by stray light from Earth. The observatory is scheduled for launch in 2007.
