Solar total (black curves), facular (red), and spot (blue) light curves as they would appear to Kepler. The light curves are plotted for four values of solar inclination: 90° (panel a)), 60° (panel b)), 30° (panel c)), and 0° (panel d)). The mean levels of all plotted light curves (indicated by the dashed lines) have been offset relative to each other for clarity, so that only the variations of the brightness, but not the offsets, have a physical meaning.