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NASA Unveils TESS’s Beautiful Southern Sky Panorama

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This mosaic of the southern sky was assembled from 13 images snapped by NASA's TESS. (Photo Credit: NASA / MIT / TESS)

NASA’s planet hunter TESS is taking in all the sweet views of the Milky Way and the sea of stars surrounding it in a new mosaic of the southern sky.

The southern panorama, which was produced from a year of observations by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), was completed on July 18. Constructed from 208 TESS images, the mosaic highlights the reach of the planet hunter’s cameras in a beautiful cosmic landscape.

With the help of the panorama, TESS has discovered 29 worlds beyond our solar system, also known as exoplanets, and more than 1,000 candidate planets that are now being investigated by astronomers worldwide.

Here’s how TESS contributed to the gorgeous artwork: The planet hunter divided the southern sky into 13 sectors and imaged each of the areas for almost 30 days using four cameras that carry 16 charge-coupled devices (CCDs).

According to NASA, TESS cameras observe a full sector of the sky every 30 minutes. Transits take place when a planet passes in front of its host star, temporarily and regularly dimming its light source. During TESS’s first year of observations, each of the planet hunter’s CCDs captured 15,347 30-minute science images. TESS has returned more than 20 terabytes of southern sky data, which NASA says is comparable to streaming roughly 6,000 high-definition movies.

These aren’t the only celestial treats shown by TESS: The planet hunter also imaged a comet in our solar system, monitored the progress of many stellar explosions (supernovae), and detected the flare from a star ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. Once it was done with its southern survey, TESS turned north to start a 12-month study of the northern sky.

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