NASA's TESS mission to hunt planets shares "1st fire" image

The exoplanet surveillance satellite in transit captured this band of stars and galaxies in the southern sky for a period of 30 minutes on August 7th. Created by combining the view of the four cameras, it is the "first light" of the first area of ​​observation that will be used to identify the planets around other stars. Image credit: NASA / MIT / TESS

Scientists at NASA's Satellite Transpective Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission recently released images of the spacecraft's first scientific orbit. The image of the "first light" of the mission was a detailed image of the southern sky taken with the four wide-field satellite cameras.

"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 image in light science shows the capabilities of the spacecraft's cameras and shows that the mission will realize its incredible potential in our search for another Earth."

TESS captured the first bright image during a 30-minute observation period on August 7, 2018. The black lines in the images are spaces between the camera detectors. Parts of dozens of constellations, from Capricornus to Pictor, appear in the images, as well as the big and small magellanic clouds, the galaxies closest to ours.

TESS took this snapshot of the great Magellan cloud, on the right, and the bright star R Doradus, on the left, with just one detector from one of his cameras. The frame is part of a celestial sky strip captured in its "first light" scientific image as part of its initial data collection. Image credit: NASA / MIT / TESS

"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 Kavil Institute for Astrophysics and Space at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Research.

The four TESS cameras, designed and built by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the MIT Kavil Institute, observe large expanses of sky in search of transits. Transits occur when a planet passes in front of its star seen from the point of view of the satellite, causing a decrease in the luminosity of the star at regular intervals.

On 19 September, the TESS mission team announced in a tweet the discovery of the first candidate of the mission, a super-Earth in orbit around the brilliant star Pi Mensae, about 60 light-years from Earth. The planet revolves around its star every 6.3 days. Then on September 20, a second candidate planet has been announced. This planet revolves around LHS 3844, a dwarf star M located 49 light-years away, every 11 hours. Both discoveries are currently being examined by other scientists.

TESS will spend two years studying 26 areas of the sky for 27 days each, covering 85% of the sky. During its first year of operation, it will cover the 13 areas of the southern sky. The spacecraft will focus on the northern sky during its second year of scientific observations.

The mission continues the legacy of NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which also uses the transit method to discover exoplanets. The TESS target stars are 30 to 300 light-years away and about 30 to 1,000 times brighter than Kepler's targets, which are between 300 and 3,000 light-years away. The brilliance 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 study the properties of planets discovered by TESS, including their atmospheric compositions, their masses and their densities.

TESS was launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., On April 18 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and flew over the moon on May 17 to head its scientific orbit. It began collecting scientific data on July 25 after a long period of verification of its scientific instruments.

Video courtesy of NASA Goddard

Tagged: NASA TESS exoplanets The range

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Jim Sharkey

Jim Sharkey is a laboratory assistant, writer and general science enthusiast. He grew up in Enid, Oklahoma, home town of Skylab and astronaut Owen K. Garriott. As a young fan of Star Trek, he participated in the letter writing campaign that resulted in the creation of the Enterprise Space Shuttle prototype.

While his university studies range from psychology and archeology to biology, he has never lost his passion for space exploration. Jim started blogging on science, science fiction and futurism in 2004.

Jim resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended NASA Socials for the Mars Science Laboratory's Curiosity Rover Landing and the launch of NASA's LADEE Lunar Orbiter.