[ad_1]
<! –
->
By NASA // September 19, 2018
<! –
->
TESS acquired the image using the four cameras for a period of 30 minutes
ABOVE VIDEO: NASA's newest planetary hunter, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is now providing valuable data to help scientists discover and study exciting new exoplanets or planets beyond our solar system.
(NASA) – NASA's newest planetary hunter, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), now provides valuable data to help scientists discover and investigate exciting new exoplanets or planets beyond our solar system.
Part of the data from TESS's initial scientific orbit includes a detailed image of the southern sky taken with the four wide-field cameras of the spacecraft. This "first light" scientific image captures a multitude of stars and other objects, including systems known to have exoplanets.
"In an ocean of stars brimming with new worlds, TESS is throwing a wide net and will carry a host of promising planets for further study," said Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at the headquarters of NASA in Washington. "This first light science image shows the capabilities of the TESS cameras and shows that the mission will realize its incredible potential in our search for another Earth."
TESS acquired the image using the four cameras for a period of 30 minutes on Tuesday, August 7th. The black lines on the image are spaces between the camera detectors. The images include parts of a dozen constellations, from Capricornus to Pictor, and two large and small magellanic clouds, the closest galaxies to ours.
The small bright dot above the small Magellanic cloud is a globular cluster – a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands of stars – called NGC 104, also known as 47 Tucanae because of its location in the constellation southern Tucana, the Toucan. Two stars, Beta Gruis and R Doradus, are so bright that they saturate an entire column of pixels on the detectors of the second and fourth TESS cameras, creating long spikes of light.
"This part of the southern hemisphere of the sky includes more than a dozen stars that we know have planets in transit from previous studies of the same." Earth observatories, "said George Ricker, principal investigator of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Research in Cambridge.
TESS cameras, designed and built by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Mass., And the MIT Kavli Institute, monitor large areas of the sky for transits. Transits occur when a planet passes in front of its star seen from the perspective of the satellite, causing a steady decrease in the brightness of the star.
TESS will spend two years monitoring 26 of these areas for 27 days each, covering 85% of the sky. During its first year of operation, the satellite will study the 13 sectors making up the southern sky. Then, TESS will turn to the 13 sectors of the northern sky to conduct a two-year survey.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captured this band of stars and galaxies in the southern sky for a period of 30 minutes on Tuesday, August 7th. Created by combining the view of the four cameras, this is the first light, the first area of observation that will be used to identify planets around other stars. Notable features of this part of the southern sky include large and small magellanic clouds and a globular cluster called NGC 104, also known as 47 Tucanae. The brightest stars in the image, Beta Gruis and R Doradus, saturated an entire column of camera-detecting pixels on the satellite's second and fourth cameras. (Image of NASA)
MIT is coordinating with Northrop Grumman in Falls Church, Virginia, to schedule scientific observations. TESS transmits images every 13.7 days, whenever it oscillates closest to the Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network receives and transmits data to MIT's TESS Payload Operations Center for initial assessment and analysis.
Comprehensive data processing and analysis takes place in the NASA Ames Research Center's Science Processing and Operations Center pipeline in Silicon Valley, California, which provides calibrated images and refined light curves.
TESS builds on the legacy of NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which also uses transits to find exoplanets. TESS target stars are 30 to 300 light-years distant and about 30 to 100 times brighter than Kepler targets, between 300 and 3,000 light-years away. The brightness of the TESS targets makes them ideal candidates for spectroscopic monitoring studies, the study of the interaction between matter and light.
The James Webb Space Telescope and other space and ground observatories will use spectroscopy to learn about the planets discovered by TESS, including their atmospheric compositions, their masses and their densities.
TESS has also launched comments requested under the TESS Guest Investigator program, which allows the scientific community to carry out research on the satellite.
The transiting exoplanet survey satellite (TESS) took this snapshot of the large Magellan cloud (right) and the bright star R Doradus (left) with a single detector. one of his cameras on August 7th. part of the southern sky TESS captured in his scientific image "first light" as part of his first series of data collection. (Image of NASA)
"We have been very pleased with the number of guest investigator proposals we have received, and we have selected programs for many scientific studies, from studying remote active galaxies to asteroids in our own solar system," he said. Padi Boyd. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
"And of course, many exoplanet proposals and exciting stars. The scientific community is eager to see the incredible data that TESS will produce and the exciting scientific discoveries for the exoplanets and beyond.
TESS was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., On April 18 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and flew over the Moon on May 17 for its scientific orbit . TESS began collecting scientific data on July 25 after a period of extensive verification of its instruments.
TESS is a NASA astrophysics mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Dr. George Ricker of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT is the principal investigator of the mission.
Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Lincoln Laboratory of MIT in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Science Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories around the world participate in the mission.
CLICK HERE FOR NEWS FROM BREVARD COUNTY
Click here to contribute to your news or announcements Free
[ad_2]
Source link
