Deep Astronomy - NASA's TESS Finishes First Year of Exoplanet Science Operations

0:00It's the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast, coming in 3, 2, 1.

0:30TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has completed its survey of the southern sky.

0:47To do this, TESS divided the southern sky into 13 sectors, and its four cameras monitored each sector for nearly a month. TESS was watching for the slight dips in starlight as distant planets passed in front of their host stars. But it also caught other transient events, like comets and supernovae, in addition to building a beautiful panoramic picture of the sky. The bright band on the left is the Milky Way, our home galaxy viewed edge-on.

1:19Zooming into the mosaic, it's clear how much detail and how many stars TESS has captured. At the center is the continuous viewing zone, where the view of one TESS camera overlaps all 13 sectors. Within it is the large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to our own. A little farther out is the more distant, small Magellanic Cloud, which is flanked by a ball of stars, the bright globular cluster NGC 104.

1:52Silhouetted by the band of the Milky Way is the Coal Sack Nebula, an obscuring cloud of dust in the constellation Crux, also known as the Southern Cross. The mosaic also contains many notable stars, such as Alpha Centauri, one of our closest neighboring systems and among the brightest in the sky.

2:17Fomalhaut, which hosts one of the first directly imaged planets. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. And Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star that marks one shoulder of the constellation Orion. The Orion Nebula, a vast nursery where stars are born, was imaged in great detail by the Hubble Space Telescope. This isn't a cosmic object at all.

2:49It's actually a reflection of Rigel, the bright star marking one of Orion's feet. And it's caused by light scattering off part of TESS's camera system.

3:02TESS's confirmed exoplanet discoveries are currently distributed all around the southern sky. Many of these discoveries are actually multi-planet systems, and several are Earth-size.

3:17Many more candidate exoplanets await confirmation by ground-based telescopes. It's easy to see which sectors were among the first, because astronomers have had more time to study and find potential transits. Eventually, astronomers predict that candidate and confirmed planets will be distributed more evenly around the sky.

3:41TESS has now turned around, marking the halfway point of its primary science mission, and is observing the northern sky using this same strategy. As it does, astronomers will continue to sift through roughly 20 terabytes of data from the southern hemisphere, as well as the new incoming information.

4:01Eventually, hundreds or even thousands of distant worlds will owe their discovery to TESS.

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5:19and share your voice with the listeners worldwide. As we wrap up today's episode, we're looking forward to unraveling more stories from the universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it. Until next time, let the stars guide your curiosity. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.

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