Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2012
During the last 10 years we have seen a revolution in the quality and quantity of data for time-series photometry. The two satellites MOST and WIRE were the precursors for dedicated time-series missions. CoRoT (launched in 2006) has now observed more than 100,000 targets for exoplanet studies and a few hundred stars for asteroseismology, while Kepler (launched in 2009) is producing extended time-series data for years, aiming to discover Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone. We discuss the accuracy of some of the parameters one may extract from the high-quality data from such photometric space missions, including the prospects for detecting oscillation-period changes due to real-time stellar evolution.