TESS's Southern Sky Panorama
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Music: “Phenomenon" from Above and Below Written and produced by Lars Leonhard
Watch this video on the NASA Goddard YouTube channel.
Complete transcript available.
Within this scene, TESS has discovered 29 exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and more than 1,000 candidate planets astronomers are now investigating.
TESS divided the southern sky into 13 sectors and imaged each one of them for nearly a month using four cameras, which carry a total of 16 charge-coupled devices (CCDs). Remarkably, the TESS cameras capture a full sector of the sky every 30 minutes as part of its search for exoplanet transits. Transits occur when a planet passes in front of its host star from our perspective, briefly and regularly dimming its light. During the satellite’s first year of operations, each of its CCDs captured 15,347 30-minute science images. These images are just a part of more than 20 terabytes of southern sky data TESS has returned, comparable to streaming nearly 6,000 high-definition movies.
In addition to its planet discoveries, TESS has imaged a comet in our solar system, followed the progress of numerous stellar explosions called supernovae, and even caught the flare from a star ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. After completing its southern survey, TESS turned north to begin a year-long study of the northern sky.

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)
More information about what can be seen in the mosaic is highlighted in overlays below.

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)

Credit: NASA/MIT/TESS and Ethan Kruse (USRA)
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Credits
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual items should be credited as indicated above.
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Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
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Science writer
- Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park)
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Visualizer
- Ethan Kruse (University of Maryland College Park)
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Public affairs officer
- Claire Andreoli (NASA/GSFC)
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Editor
- Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
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Narrator
- Barb Mattson (University of Maryland College Park)
Release date
This page was originally published on Tuesday, November 5, 2019.
This page was last updated on Sunday, February 23, 2025 at 12:16 AM EST.