{"id":496792,"date":"2026-05-22T02:57:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T02:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/496792\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T02:57:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T02:57:24","slug":"nasas-exoplanet-hunter-reveals-its-most-complete-look-at-the-night-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/496792\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA’s Exoplanet Hunter Reveals its Most Complete Look at the Night Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A\u2018This view of the whole sky was constructed from 96 TESS sectors. By the end of September 2025, when the last image of this mosaic was captured, TESS had discovered 679 exoplanets (blue dots) and 5,165 candidates (orange dots). The glowing arc running through the center is the plane of the Milky Way. The Large Magellanic Cloud can be seen along the bottom edge just left of center. Black areas within the oval indicate regions TESS has not yet imaged.\u2019 | Credit: NASA\/MIT\/TESS and Veselin Kostov (University of Maryland College Park) <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has released a new mosaic that offers its most complete view of the night sky yet. Captured over eight years, the all-sky mosaic includes 679 confirmed, newly discovered exoplanets and nearly 5,200 candidate exoplanets. <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s planet-hunting satellite shared its first photo<\/a> back in May 2018, showing off a dazzling starfield with over 200,000 stars. In the next two years, TESS captured 400 times as much of the night sky as seen in its first photo below. It has since captured nearly the entire night sky. <\/p>\n

\"ATESS\u2019 first photo, published in May 2018 | Credit: NASA <\/p>\n

The mosaic above was built using 96 TESS sectors, featuring images captured from April 2018 through September 2025, when the mission\u2019s second extended mission ended. <\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last eight years, TESS has become a fire hose of exoplanet science,\u201d says Rebekah Hounsell, TESS associated project scientist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cIt\u2019s helped us find planets of all different sizes, from tiny Mercury-like ones to those larger than Jupiter. Some of them are even in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be possible on the surface, an important factor in our search for life beyond Earth.\u201d <\/p>\n

TESS photographs each of its sectors for about a month using its four onboard cameras. Each of the four identical cameras features four CCD sensors and seven different lenses. Each of the CCD sensors captures an area of the sky that could hold 576 full Moons, NASA explains<\/a>. <\/p>\n

MIT describes<\/a> the four cameras as \u201chighly optimized, red-sensitive, wide-field cameras that together can monitor a 24 degree by 90 degree strip of the sky.\u201d The cameras monitor each strip of the sky for 27 days and nights with a two-second cadence. The cameras feature custom, fast f\/1.4 lenses and 4,096 x 4,096-pixel back-illuminated sensors built by MIT\/Lincoln Lab. <\/p>\n

\"DiagramCredit: NASA GSFC <\/p>\n

The blue dots in NASA\u2019s new image mark the locations of 679 confirmed exoplanets, as of September 2025. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis menagerie includes worlds that may be covered by volcanoes, are being destroyed by their stars, or orbit two stars \u2014 experiencing double sunrises and sunsets each day,\u201d NASA explains<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The 5,165 orange dots are candidate exoplanets yet to be confirmed. <\/p>\n

Also prominently featured in the mosaic is a bright portion of the Milky Way, shown as a brilliant arc. There are also two bright white ovals in the image, both on the left-hand side of the frame. These are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, located approximately 160,000 and 200,000 light-years away from Earth. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe more we dig into the large TESS dataset, especially using automated algorithms, the more surprises we find,\u201d adds Allison Youngblood, the TESS project scientist at NASA Goddard. \u201cIn addition to planets, TESS has helped us study rivers of young stars, observe dynamic galactic behavior, and monitor asteroids near Earth. As TESS fills in more of the night sky, there\u2019s no knowing what it might see next.\u201d <\/p>\n

Image credits:<\/strong> NASA\/MIT\/TESS and Veselin Kostov (University of Maryland College Park) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018This view of the whole sky was constructed from 96 TESS sectors. By the end of September 2025,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[270],"tags":[216326,18,6123,19,17,1024,133,451,98307],"class_list":["post-496792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ccd","tag-eire","tag-exoplanets","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-tess"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116615987563628727","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}