The American space agency NASA has published the so-called ‘first light’ image taken by the relatively new space telescope TESS. This spacecraft is to follow the Kepler space telescope in the search for exoplanets.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite imaged a portion of the sky 24 degrees wide on Aug. 7, capturing a 30-minute stretch of space from the celestial equator to the South Pole. This image has imaged more than a dozen stars known to have exoplanets. According to NASA, TESS is now producing valuable data to discover and study new exoplanets.
The entire image covers one of the 26 sectors of the sky that TESS will study over the next two years. Each sector is observed for a period of 27 days. The satellite has four wide-angle cameras and has to observe a total of 85 percent of the visible space. It is estimated that TESS could eventually discover 10,000 new exoplanets. Some of it will likely be studied in more detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2021.
Part of the image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular galaxy about 170,000 light-years from Earth that can be seen with the naked eye at night with low light pollution. The bright star to the left of the Large Magellanic Cloud is R Doradus.
Launched in April, TESS is more or less the successor to the Kepler space telescope. It was recently brought out of sleep mode for the start of a new observation mission, but Kepler’s end is near, with not much fuel left. It is difficult to determine how much is left, partly because the fuel does not remain at the bottom of the tank due to the lack of gravity.
To the right is the sliver of sky captured by TESS. A section of it has been enlarged. The black lines in the strip are the gaps between the camera detectors.