In addition to transits, planets orbiting around their stars undergo reflected-light variations—like the Moon, they go through phases from full to new and back again. Because Kepler cannot resolve the planet from the star, it sees only the combined light, and the brightness of the host star seems to change over each orbit in a periodic manner. Although the effect is small—the photometric precision required to see a close-in giant planet is about the same as to detect an Earth-sized planet in transit across a solar-type star—Jupiter-sized planets with an orbital period of a few days or less are detectable by sensitive space telescopes such as Kepler. In the long run, this method may help find more planets than the transit method, because the reflected light variation with orbital phase is largely independent of the planet's orbital inclination, and does not require the planet to pass in front of the disk of the star. In addition, the phase function of a giant planet is also a function of its thermal properties and atmosphere, if any. Therefore, the phase curve may constrain other planetary properties, such as the particle size distribution of the atmospheric particles.