A map of the sky is now crowded with over 5,000 exoplanet candidates from NASAs TESS objective. The TESS Science Office at MIT released the most recent batch of TESS Objects of Interest (large orange points on the map) on December 21, improving the brochure to this 5,000-count turning point. Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/MIT/TESS
Brochure of world prospects nearly doubles in size during 2020-21.
The brochure of world prospects found with NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) recently passed 5,000 TOIs, or TESS Objects of Interest.
The brochure has actually been growing progressively because the start of the objective in 2018, and the batch of TOIs increasing the brochure to over 5,000 come mainly from the Faint Star Search led by MIT postdoc Michelle Kunimoto.
Kunimoto reflects, “This time last year, TESS had discovered just over 2,400 TOIs. Today, TESS has reached more than twice that number– a substantial testimony to the objective and all the groups scouring the information for brand-new worlds. Im excited to see thousands more in the years to come!”
Now in its extended objective, TESS is observing the Northern Hemisphere and ecliptic plane, consisting of regions of the sky formerly observed by the Kepler and K2 objectives. The TOIs added in late December are from the 3rd year of the TESS objective, which ran from July 2020 to June 2021. TESS re-observed the sky visible in the Earths Southern Hemisphere, reviewing stars it had very first observed at the objectives start in 2018.
TOI manager Katharine Hesse remarks, “With information from the very first year of the extended objective, we have found lots of extra candidates to TOIs found during the prime mission. I am excited to see how many multi-planet systems we can find throughout the rest of the prolonged mission and in upcoming years with TESS.” Planned extensions of the TESS objective to 2025 and beyond must reveal much more brand-new planet candidates.
Finding more planet prospects and including them to the TESS Objects of Interest Catalog is the primary step. In the coming months, astronomers worldwide will study each of these TOIs to validate whether they are bona fide planets, and the brochure of validated exoplanets from the TESS mission (175 as of December 20) will continue to grow.
TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer objective led and run by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and handled by NASAs Goddard Space Flight. More than a dozen universities, research study institutes, and observatories worldwide are participants in the objective.
A map of the sky is now crowded with over 5,000 exoplanet candidates from NASAs TESS objective. The TESS Science Office at MIT released the most current batch of TESS Objects of Interest (big orange points on the map) on December 21, enhancing the catalog to this 5,000-count turning point. Now in its extended mission, TESS is observing the Northern Hemisphere and ecliptic aircraft, including areas of the sky formerly observed by the Kepler and K2 objectives. TESS is a NASA Astrophysics Explorer objective led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by NASAs Goddard Space Flight.