TESS tagged posts

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have shown that Alpha Draconis, a well-studied star visible to the naked eye, and its fainter companion star regularly eclipse each other. While astronomers previously knew this was a binary system, the mutual eclipses came as a complete surprise.

“The first question that comes to mind is ‘how did we miss this?'” said Angela Kochoska, a postdoctoral researcher at Villanova University in Pennsylvania who presented the findings at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu on Jan. 6...

Data offer new clues about why stars explode. A team of astronomers at The Ohio State University showed that the satellite survey TESS, could be used to monitor a particular type of supernova, giving scientists more clues about what causes white dwarf stars to explode – and about the elements those explosions leave behind.

“We have known for years that these stars explode, but we have terrible ideas of why they explode,” said Patrick Vallely, lead author of the study and an Ohio State astronomy graduate student...

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered a world between the sizes of Mars and Earth orbiting a bright, cool, nearby star. The planet, called L 98-59b, marks the tiniest discovered by TESS to date.

Two other worlds orbit the same star. While all three planets’ sizes are known, further study with other telescopes will be needed to determine if they have atmospheres and, if so, which gases are present...

Three extrasolar comets have been discovered around the star Beta Pictoris, 63 light years away, by the University of Innsbruck. Analysis of data from the current NASA mission TESS by Sebastian Zieba and Konstanze Zwintz from the Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics, together with colleagues from Leiden University and the University of Warwick has revealed the extrasolar objects.

Just about a year after the launch of the NASA mission TESS, the first three comets orbiting the nearby star Beta Pictoris outside our solar system were discovered in data from the space telescope. The main goal of TESS is to search for exoplanets – planets orbiting other stars...