Well-known stars shine, nebulae shine and nearby galaxies enchant in a new panorama of the northern sky, which was compiled from 208 images of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) of NASA.
In this star scene, TESS has discovered 67 new exoplanets. Astronomers see around 1,200 additional ones Exoplanet Candidates, potential new worlds waiting to be confirmed. More than 600 of these candidates are in the northern sky.
The northern mosaic covers less the sky than its southern counterpart, which was depicted during the mission’s first year of operation. For about half of the northern sectors, the team decided to point the cameras further north to minimize the impact of stray light from the earth and moon. This results in an obvious gap along the outside edge of the mosaic.
TESS has now begun its expanded mission in which it will spend another year mapping the southern sky. The satellite will revisit the planets discovered in the first year, discover new worlds and fill gaps in coverage from its first survey. Thanks to improvements in the satellite’s data acquisition and processing, TESS can now return images of the entire sector every 10 minutes and measure the brightness of thousands of stars every 20 seconds – while continuing its previous strategy of measuring the brightness of tens of thousands of stars every two minutes to eat .
