TESS tagged posts

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 ...

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...

A University of Arizona-led research team has found bands and stripes on the brown dwarf closest to Earth, hinting at the processes churning the brown dwarf’s atmosphere from within.

Brown dwarfs are mysterious celestial objects that are not quite stars and not quite planets. They are about the size of Jupiter but typically dozens of times more massive...

According to new research using data from NASA’s retired planet-hunting mission, the Kepler space telescope, about half the stars similar in temperature to our Sun could have a rocky planet capable of supporting liquid water on its surface.

Our galaxy holds at least an estimated 300 million of these potentially habitable worlds, based on even the most conservative interpretation of the results in a new study to be published in The Astronomical Journal...