Transit Method

Detecting exoplanets by measuring the tiny dip in starlight as a planet passes in front of its host star.

The transit method works by continuously monitoring the brightness of a star. When a planet passes between the star and our telescopes,an event called a transit,it blocks a small fraction of the star's light, causing a measurable dip in brightness. The size of the dip reveals the planet's radius, while the timing between transits gives the orbital period. This method has been spectacularly successful thanks to space telescopes like Kepler and TESS, which can monitor thousands of stars simultaneously. However, it only works when a planet's orbit is aligned edge-on from our perspective, meaning many planets are missed simply because of geometry.