View larger. | View from the Death Star? No. A new mosaic of the southern sky via NASA’s TESS planet-hunter. You can see the glowing band of the Milky Way (left), the Orion Nebula (top), and the Large Magellanic Cloud (center). The prominent dark lines are gaps between the detectors in TESS’s camera system. Image via NASA/MIT/TESS/Ethan Kruse. Read more.
TESS stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It's NASA's newest planet-hunter, designed to add to the number of 4,000+ known exoplanets, or planets orbiting distant suns. The awesome new mosaic of the southern sky was created from 208 images taken by the TESS spacecraft during its first year of science operations. Within the image above, TESS has discovered 29 exoplanets and more than 1,000 candidate planets that astronomers are now investigating. Read more, see images, watch a video.
When a star strays too close to a black hole, intense gravitational tides break it apart into a stream of gas. This disruption occurred in TESS’s continuous viewing zone, letting astronomers watch it from start to finish. Watch a video.
View larger. | Although much more common than transits of Venus, a transit of Mercury happens only 14 times in the 21st century (2001 to 2100). The coming Mercury transit will be Monday, November 11. The next one after that will be in 2032. Monday's Mercury transit will be visible from much of the globe. The entire transit will be seen from South America, eastern North America, and far-western Africa. Click here for details on how to watch. Image via Eclipsewise.
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