Universe  ID: 13285

TESS's Southern Sky Panorama

The glow of the Milky Way — our galaxy seen edgewise — arcs across a sea of stars in a new mosaic of the southern sky produced from a year of observations by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Constructed from 208 TESS images taken during the mission’s first year of science operations, completed on July 18, the southern panorama reveals both the beauty of the cosmic landscape and the reach of TESS's cameras.

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.
 

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For More Information

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-tess-presents-panorama-of-southern-sky


Credits

Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer
Francis Reddy (University of Maryland College Park): Lead Science Writer
Ethan Kruse (University of Maryland College Park): Visualizer
Claire Andreoli (NASA/GSFC): Public Affairs Officer
Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Editor
Barb Mattson (University of Maryland College Park): Narrator
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual items should be credited as indicated above.

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13285

Mission:
TESS

This item is part of these series:
Narrated Movies
Astrophysics Stills
Astrophysics Features

Keywords:
SVS >> HDTV
GCMD >> Location >> Southern Hemisphere
SVS >> Hyperwall
SVS >> Astrophysics
SVS >> Star
SVS >> Nebula
NASA Science >> Universe
SVS >> Exoplanet
SVS >> TESS
SVS >> Orion

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0