The characteristics of Barnard's Star allowed the team to infer the properties of KOI-961, which is needed to deduce the nature of the planetary system from the star's
light curve, a plot of how the star dims over time due to transiting planets.
Moreover, its
light curve -- the variation of its brightness with time -- had an unusual shape.
It's true that copernicus123 first noted that this star's
light curve displayed a "bizarre peak--a giant transit." However, numerous scientists as well as citizen scientists had already examined the Kepler observations, even if only as part of a larger dataset.
Sound wave conversions of the
light curve waves created by stars discovered by NASA's Kepler mission and other sounds of planets and stars
The intricate
light curve of that event suggested more than 30 separate ring structures in a disk 1.2 a.u.
Hubble sent a letter, along with a
light curve of V1, to Shapley telling him of his discovery.
David Arnett of the University of Chicago pointed out, they can extrapolate the supernova's
light curve, its graph of brightness over time, back to an appropriate starting point at the moment IMB and Kamiokande recorded their neutrinos, so they feel that was the moment the explosion began.
The dips lasted from days to weeks and showed no regularity in duration, periodicity, or the "shape" of the
light curve.
The UV spectroscopy was also used to calculate a
light curve to precisely show just how much of the star's light is blocked out during transit.
While the results show a rather scattered
light curve (see https://is.gd/r6L08J, third image), they confirmed the period of the brightness variations known since the 1970s.