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NASA's exoplanet ngo accidentally discovers a world it was ne'er meant to find
The exoplanet scope TESS revealed a distant world utilizing an wholly different discovery method than nan 1 it was built around
By Sam Macdonald edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier
Artist’s conception visualizing Gaia23bra b, nan first microlensing satellite orbiting a distant prima recovered by NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite).
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
It seems that NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is an overachiever.
When NASA launched TESS successful 2018, nan outer had 1 job: watch adjacent stars for nan mini dips successful brightness caused by planets passing successful beforehand of them. It has done that spectacularly well, discovering hundreds of new worlds. Now scientists person realized TESS was besides collecting grounds for thing it was ne'er expected to find.
In a study published July 1 successful nan Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers study that TESS captured nan awesome of Gaia23bra b, a satellite orbiting a prima astir 40,000 light-years away—more than 250 times nan region of nan adjacent stars TESS was designed to study.
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It’s a spot for illustration pointing a backyard vertebrate camera astatine your feeder and later realizing you besides captured wildlife connected different continent.
Even much surprising, TESS recovered nan satellite utilizing a method it wasn’t designed to use.
The find began successful April 2023, erstwhile nan European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft spotted a little brightening of a distant star. That flash was caused by gravitational microlensing, a arena predicted by Albert Einstein.
When 2 stars align almost perfectly from Earth’s perspective, nan gravity of nan nearer 1 bends and magnifies nan ray from nan much distant star, acting for illustration a cosmic magnifying glass. If that foreground prima hosts a planet, nan satellite leaves ripples successful nan magnified light.
Gaia recorded nan stellar brightening, but it didn’t cod capable observations to uncover nan satellite itself. Fortunately, little than a period later, TESS happened to beryllium staring astatine nan aforesaid spot of sky.
“Gaia’s observations were excessively sparse to prime up connected nan planet,” Mallory Harris, a Ph.D. campaigner astatine nan University of New Mexico and lead writer of nan study, said in a statement. “The TESS spacecraft happened to beryllium monitoring nan aforesaid area of nan entity during nan microlensing event, and its denser clip sum showed other features successful nan ray curve caused by a planet.”
But cipher noticed.
Why would they?
“When TESS launched, nary 1 expected it to ever beryllium tin of uncovering this benignant of planet,” study co-author Diana Dragomir, an adjunct professor astatine nan University of New Mexico, said successful nan aforesaid statement.
The microlensing lineup betwixt nan 2 stars came and went successful 2023, and nan telltale planetary awesome sat unnoticed successful TESS’s archive for astir 3 years earlier researchers connected nan dots.
“The find implies that location are astir apt different alleged microlensing planets hiding successful TESS’s information that we hadn’t antecedently thought to look for,” Dragomir said.
The find suggests 1 of NASA’s astir successful satellite hunters whitethorn still person plentifulness of surprises hiding successful its archives.
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