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NASA's TESS mission, which is responsible for planetary hunting, has only been examining the sky since July, but it is already making incredible discoveries.
In January, three discoveries of exoplanets were linked to the first observations of TESS. Now, the data collected by TESS has helped locate a new planet the size of Saturn.
TOI (object of interest TESS) 197.01 is considered a "hot Saturn". It is similar in size to this planet and orbits its host star at a close distance, circling it every 14 days. This narrow orbit creates a high surface temperature on the planet. The planet is described in an article that will be published in The Astronomical Journal.
Asteroseismologists have discovered the planet by studying seismic waves called stars quakes in stars where the luminosity seems to extend. Astronomers can determine the age of the star, as well as its mass and radius. The combination of these data with other observations reveals the properties of the exoplanets in orbit around these host stars.
The exoplanet is a gaseous giant whose radius is nine times that of the Earth and about 60 times the mass of the Earth. The host star is 5 billion years old and slightly heavier and larger than our sun.
"This is the first bucket of water from the TESS fire hose," said Steve Kawaler, co-author of the study and professor of physics and astronomy at Iowa State University, in a statement. "What's exciting is that TESS has been the only game in town for a while and the data is so good that we plan to try to do science that we did not think about. Perhaps we could also look at the very dim stars – the white dwarfs – who are my first love and who represent the future of our solar and solar system. "
The satellite transits from exoplanet satellite study was launched in April to replace the Kepler Space Telescope with the hunting stick at the planet, at the end of this historic mission.
TESS is studying an area of the sky 400 times larger than that observed by Kepler, including 200,000 of the brightest stars nearby. In the space of two years, the four large-field embedded cameras will look at different areas of the sky several days at a time. This will allow scientists to observe almost the entire sky.
This week, a team of astronomers has drawn up a list of what could be the most promising stars to support the planets of the habitable zone, the catalog of stars of the TESS liveable zone, published in the newspaper Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The catalog includes 1,822 stars that TESS was able to observe where planets slightly larger than the Earth would exist in the habitable zone of their star. The habitable zone, called Goldilocks Zone, is where the conditions are warm enough to allow liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet. Liquid water is the foundation of life as we know it.
"Life can exist on all kinds of worlds, but the one we know today is ours, so it makes sense to start by looking for planets similar to Earth," said Lisa Kaltenegger, lead author and member. of the TESS Cornell University Scientific Team, in a statement. "This catalog is important for TESS because anyone working with the data wants to know which stars we can find the nearest Earth analogues."
And 408 stars could support planets the size of the Earth that receive a similar amount of radiation as we receive from the sun.
"I have 408 new favorite stars," Kaltenegger said. "It's amazing that I do not have to pick one; I will now search for hundreds of stars. "
The catalog also contains a subset of 227 stars in which TESS can perform a wider search for colder planets, similar to Mars, to provide more worlds in the universe.
"We do not know how many TESS planets will find among the hundreds of stars in our catalog or whether they will be habitable," said Kaltenegger. "But the odds are in our favor. Some studies indicate that there are many rocky planets in the habitable area of cool stars, like those in our catalog. We can not wait to see what worlds we will find. "
TESS will search for exoplanets using the transit method, observing slight dimples in starlight as planets pass in front of them. Bright stars facilitate tracking studies using terrestrial and space telescopes.
NASA expects TESS to catalog more than 1,500 exoplanets, but could find thousands. Officials predict that 300 of them will be exoplanets the size of the Earth or superlands the size of a double Earth. These planets could be the best candidates to support life outside our solar system. Like Earth, they are small, rocky and usually found in the habitable areas of their stars, which means that liquid water can exist on the surface.
TESS is considered a "bridge to the future", finding candidates for an exoplanet to study in more detail.
These exoplanets will be studied so that NASA can determine the best targets for missions such as the James Webb Space Telescope. This telescope, launched in 2021, would be able to characterize the details and atmospheres of exoplanets in a way that scientists have not been able to do.
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