TESS tagged posts

Earth has a Hot New Neighbor – and it’s an Astronomer’s Dream

Artist's impression of the rocky terrain and lava rivers on the surface of Gliese 486b
It’s getting hot in here … 430 degrees Celsius hot, that is. Artist’s interpretation: RenderArea

A rocky planet discovered in the Virgo constellation could change how we look for life in the universe. It could be our best chance yet of studying rocky planet atmospheres outside the solar system, a new international study involving UNSW Sydney shows.

The planet, called Gliese 486b (pronounced Glee-seh), is a ‘super-Earth’: that is, a rocky planet bigger than Earth but smaller than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. It orbits a red dwarf star around 26 light-years away, making it a close neighbour — galactically speaking.

With a piping-hot surface temperature of 430 degrees Celsius, Gliese 486b is too hot to support human life...

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TESS discovers New Worlds in a River of Young Stars

This illustration sketches out the main features of TOI 451, a triple-planet system located 400 light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Using observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than Earth orbiting a much younger version of our Sun called TOI 451. The system resides in the recently discovered Pisces-Eridanus stream, a collection of stars less than 3% the age of our solar system that stretches across one-third of the sky.

The planets were discovered in TESS images taken between October and December 2018...

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New Planets found in Unique System with CHEOPS

CHEOPS
CHEOPS_TOI-178 © ESA/CHEOPS Mission Consortium/A Leleu et al

A unique six-planet system, 200 light years away from Earth, has been observed around the star TOI-178 by an international research team including scientists from the University of St Andrews.

The observations were made using the CHEOPS (Characterising ExOPlanets Satellite) space telescope that was launched in December 2019 with the important goal of precisely measuring the size of known planets. However, as this work finds, the spacecraft has the exciting potential to discover new planets.

CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the aegis of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva and the University of St Andrews.

The team had believed there ...

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An ‘Old Faithful’ Active Galaxy: Black Hole Rips Away at Star

This image of active galaxy ESO 253-3 was captured by the European Space Observatory’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer as part of the All-weather MUse Supernova Integral-field of Nearby Galaxies (AMUSING) survey. ESO 253-3 displays the most predictable and frequent flares scientists have yet identified in an active galaxy.
Credits: Michael Tucker (University of Hawai’i) and the AMUSING survey

During a typical year, over a million people visit Yellowstone National Park, where the Old Faithful geyser regularly blasts a jet of boiling water high in the air. Now, an international team of astronomers has discovered a cosmic equivalent, a distant galaxy that erupts roughly every 114 days.

Using data from facilities including NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and Transiting Exopla...

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