Searching Near and Far: Exoplanet Transits and Astrophysical Transients from the TESS Mission

Launched in April 2018, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is well on its way to discovering thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest starts in the sky.  This first-ever spaceborne all-sky transit survey will identify planets in the solar neighobhood ranging in size from Earth-sized to gas giants, orbiting a wide variety of host starts, ranging from cool M dwarfs to hot O/B giants.

TESS stars are typically 30 - 100 times brighter than those surveyed by the Kepler satellite; thus, TESS planets will be far easier to characterize with follow-up observations.  A number of naked eye TESS candidates are already being evaluated.

The full frame images (FFIs) from the TESS mission provide precise photometric information for every one of millions of objects brighter than magnitude I= +16 within the 2300 square degree instantaneous field of view of the TESS cameras.  As TESS's limiting magnitude for stacked FFIs extends to I= +20, a wealth of galactic and extragalactic transients are already being detected by the mission - including flare stars and supernovae - as well as numerous asteroids and NEOs.

The initial TESS all-sky survey is well underway, convering 13 observation sectors in the Southern Ecliptic Hemisphere in year 1, and 13 observation sectors in Year 2 - ~90% of the entire sky.  The status of the TESS mission after the first seven observations will be reviewed.  The opportunities enabled by TESS's unique lunar-resonant orbit for an extended mission lasting more than a decade will also be presented.

Speaker: George Ricker, MIT