TESS tagged posts

NASA’s TESS mission finds its Smallest Planet yet

The three planets discovered in the L98-59 system by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) are compared to Mars and Earth in order of increasing size in this illustration.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

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...

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Three Exocomets discovered around the star Beta Pictoris

Artist’s impression of the exocomets in the planetary system around Beta Pictoris. Credit: Michaela Pink

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...

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Blue Supergiant Stars Open Doors to Concert in Space

A snapshot from a hydrodynamical simulation of the interior of a star three times as heavy as our Sun, which shows waves generated by turbulent core convection and propagating throughout the star’s interior. Darker and lighter colours represent fluctuations due to waves.
© Tamara Rogers (Newcastle University)

Almost all blue supergiants shimmer in brightness because of waves on their surface. Blue supergiants are rock-and-roll: they live fast and die young. This makes them rare and difficult to study. Before space telescopes were invented, few blue supergiants had been observed, so our knowledge of these stars was limited...

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TESS finds its 1st Earth-sized Planet

This is an artist’s conception of HD 21749c, the first Earth-sized planet found by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite (TESS), as well as its sibling, HD 21749b, a warm sub-Neptune-sized world.
Credit: Illustration by Robin Dienel, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science

A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world, according to a new paper from a team of astronomers that includes Carnegie’s Johanna Teske, Paul Butler, Steve Shectman, Jeff Crane, and Sharon Wang.

“It’s so exciting that TESS, which launched just about a year ago, is already a game-changer in the planet-hunting business,” said Teske, who is second author on the paper...

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