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And for exo planets, the dip in light is extremely small (<1%), possibly comparable to the normal variation in the luminosity of the star. This makes the detection of planets by this method impossible if the star is not intrinsically "stable" or at least predictable. It is interesting some of the things they have to take into account for these measurements before they are sure they have discovered something (the book New Worlds which I recently reviewed details a number of these factors).
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