TESS Archives

December 10, 2019December 10, 2019 by Evan Gough

NASA’s TESS Watched an Outburst from Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Comet 46P/Wirtanen. Image Credit: By Stub Mandrel at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75160399

TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has imaged an outburst from the comet 46P/Wirtanen. It caught the outburst in what NASA is calling the clearest images yet of a comet outburst from start to finish. A comet outburst is a significant but temporary increase in the comet’s activity, outside of the normal sunlight-driven vaporization of ices that creates a comet’s coma and tail.

Astronomers aren’t certain what causes them, but a new study based on this observation is shedding some light on them.

December 8, 2019December 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

A New Way to Measure the Age of the Milky Way

Artist’s impression of the warped and twisted Milky Way disk. Credit: Chen Xiaodian/Kavli Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics

Like many other spiral galaxies in the Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy consists of two disk-like structures – the thin disk and the thick disk. The thick disk, which envelopes the thin disk, contains about 20% of the Milky Way’s stars and is thought to be the older of the pair based on the composition of its stars (which have greater metallicity) and its puffier nature.

However, in a recent study, a team of 38 scientists led by researchers from Australia’s ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in Three Dimensions (ASTRO-3D) used data from the now-retired Kepler mission to measure starquakes in the Milky Way’s disk. From this, they have revised the official estimates on the age of the Milky Way’s thick disk, which they conclude is around 10 billion years old.

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

TESS Has Now Captured Almost the Entire Southern Sky. Here’s a Mosaic Made of 15,347 Photographs

On April 18th, 2018, NASA’s Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) took to space for the first time. By August, it began capturing the light curves of distant stars for signs of planetary transits, effectively picking up where the Kepler Space Telescope left off. Now, just a few months away from the end of its primary mission, NASA has put a year’s worth of images of the southern sky together to create the beautiful mosaic you see here.

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 by Evan Gough

It Seems Impossible, But Somehow This Planet Survived its Star’s Red Giant Phase

An artists's illustration of TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Image Credit: NASA

Astronomers working with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data have found a planet where it shouldn’t be: in the space recently filled by its host star when it was a red giant.

October 26, 2019October 28, 2019 by Matt Williams

Breakthrough Listen and NASA Team Up to Look for Signs of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence!

Planets everywhere. So where are all the aliens? Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

This week, the non-profit research organization Breakthrough Listen announced that it was entering into a partnership with scientists from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. This new collaboration will direct the resources of the former with data and expertise of the latter to the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI) like never before!

August 9, 2019August 9, 2019 by Fraser Cain

One Year, Almost 1,000 Planetary Candidates. An Update On TESS

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Telescope launched back in April, 2018. After a few months of testing, it was ready to begin mapping the southern sky, searching for planets orbiting stars relatively nearby.

We’re just over a year into the mission now, and on July 18th, TESS has shifted its attention to the Northern Hemisphere, continuing the hunt for planets in the northern skies.

July 31, 2019July 31, 2019 by Evan Gough

NASA Promised More Smaller, Earth-size Exoplanets. TESS is Delivering.

This infographic illustrates key features of the TOI 270 system, located about 73 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor. The three known planets were discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite through periodic dips in starlight caused by each orbiting world. Insets show information about the planets, including their relative sizes, and how they compare to Earth. Temperatures given for TOI 270’s planets are equilibrium temperatures, calculated without the warming effects of any possible atmospheres. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger

When NASA launched TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) in 2018, it had a specific goal. While its predecessor, the Kepler spacecraft, found thousands of exoplanets, many of them were massive gas giants. TESS was sent into space with a promise: to find smaller planets similar in size to Earth and Neptune, orbiting stable stars without much flaring. Those constraints, astronomers hoped, would identify more exoplanets that are potentially habitable.

With this discovery of three new exoplanets, TESS is fulfilling its promise.

July 3, 2019July 3, 2019 by Matt Williams

The Planet-Hunting TESS Discovers Its Smallest Exoplanet to Date

The three planets discovered in the L98-59 system by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) are compared to Mars and Earth in order of increasing size in this illustration. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Thanks in large part to the Kepler Space Telescope, the number of confirmed extrasolar planets has grown exponentially in the last decade. And with next-generation missions like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) already in orbit, more candidates and confirmed planets are being discovered all the time – many of them new and exciting ones too!

In fact, one of TESS’ most recent discoveries includes a three-planet system that orbits a star (L 98-59) located roughly 35 light-years from Earth. One of the planets, known as L 98-59b, is between the sizes of Earth and Mars – effectively making it the smallest exoplanet discovered by TESS to date. The discovery also highlights the sophistication of TESS and doubles the number of small exoplanets that are considered worthy of follow-up studies.

April 18, 2019April 18, 2019 by Evan Gough

TESS Just Found its First Earth-Sized World

Artist's conception of HD 21749c, the first Earth-sized planet found by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS), as well as its sibling, HD 21749b, a warm sub-Neptune-sized world. Credit: Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science.

NASA’s new planet-hunting telescope, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), just found its first Earth-sized world. Though the Earth-sized planet, and its hot sub-Neptune companion, were first observed by TESS in January 2019, it’s taken until now to confirm their status with ground-based follow-up observations. The discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

January 9, 2019January 9, 2019 by Evan Gough

TESS Finds its Third Planet, a sub-Neptune with a 36-Day Orbit

An artist's illustration of the newly-discovered exoplanet HD21749b. Image Credit: By NASA/MIT/TESS - https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/01/08/climate/08TESS2/merlin_148878360_2fd4c6fe-ad22-400b-a882-f6b3a698a573-superJumbo.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75686540

After only three months of operation, NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) spacecraft is delivering on its mission to find more exoplanets. A new paper presents the latest finding: a sub-Neptune planet with a 36-day orbit around its star. This is the third confirmed exoplanet that TESS has found.

The planet orbits a K-dwarf star about 52 light years away, in the constellation Reticulum. In astronomical terms, this makes the planet pretty close to us, and a great candidate for follow-up observations. Even better, it may have a sibling planet about the same size as Earth.