The study of stellar oscillations - asteroseismology - has revolutionized our understanding of the physical properties of the Sun and similar potential for other stars has been demonstrated in recent years .
In particular , asteroseismic studies can constrain the stellar size , temperature and composition , which are important parameters to our understanding of planetary structure and evolution .
This makes asteroseismology a very powerful tool to complement planetary transits .
As an example , the transit measurement alone does not give the radius of the planet unless the radius of the host star is known , which again requires a known distance to the system .
Transit measurements will therefore often require additional measurements to establish the radius of the planet .
With asteroseismology we can determine the radius of a star to very high precision ( 2–3 % ) using only the photometric transit measurements .
This will be very valuable for a mission such as Kepler , which will produce photometric time series of very high quality .