[mcswell]

You said: > We expect that about 1% of the orbital planes will be aligned so that we > can get meaningful data Somewhere below, someone used the figure of 0.01%. I assume they were mistaken, and your 1% number is about right for some "average" star sizes and orbits.

At any rate, that figure depends on the size of the star, and the distance from the star that the planet orbits--the further away, the smaller the chance that their orbital plane would be aligned with our solar system. For a Sun-class star, and a planet inside the habitable zone, what is the %? Am I correct in thinking it would be approximately 0.5/180, where 0.5 degrees is the apparent size of our Sun in the sky, and 180 degrees is of course half a circle (since it doesn't matter whether we're on one side or the opposite side of their star, hence 360/2). Which works out to about 0.14%, right?