Undiscovered Worlds
Friday, February 25
7:30pm:
Zoom: Presentation and Q&A with Katharine Hesse and Evan Tey, TESS Science Office, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Updates from NASA’s Exoplanet Mission
Katharine Hesse and Evan Tey
TESS Science Office, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is looking for planets around the brightest and closest stars in our neighborhood. After a three and a half year search, TESS has found over 5,000 possible exoplanets by looking for transits: dips in a star's brightness as planets block out its light periodically as they orbit. MIT researchers working with TESS will share some of the interesting exoplanet systems they have found and what they hope to find as TESS continues to survey the sky.
TESS will be providing the James Webb Space Telescope with a catalog of the nearest and brightest stars hosting transiting exoplanets — the most favorable targets for more detailed investigations. The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful and complex space-based telescope ever built and launched into space. Now fully deployed, Webb will study the atmospheres of exoplanets and search for building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe!
