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Main Meeting - July 2021 - via Zoom

Event Date

A Treasure Map in the Stars: Discovering Exoplanets with NASA's TESS Mission

Natalia Guerrero

TESS Object of Interest Manager | MIT-TESS Communications Lead

 

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TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, has identified over 4,000 exoplanet candidates since it launched in 2018. This survey spanning  the entire night sky has added over 4,000 "X-marks-the-spots" to our map of the solar neighborhood. 

Observatories across the globe and orbiting the Earth are racing to study and confirm these exoplanet candidates as bona-fide TESS exoplanets. Fueled by the wealth of open-access TESS data, community-driven projects find additional candidates in the mission's. As TESS stares and steps across the night sky in 27-day chunks, it also witnesses supernovae, flaring stars, and passing asteroids. 

As the TESS mission embarks on its fourth year of operation, its treasure trove of discoveries fills in the bigger picture of planetary possibilities, and where within it our Earth, and our Solar system, belongs.

 

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Our Speaker – Natalia Guerrero is the TESS Objects of Interest manager and the MIT-TESS Communications lead in the TESS Science Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to the TESS launch in April 2018, she contributed to the pre-flight testing of the four TESS cameras. Natalia studied physics and writing at MIT and graduated in 2014.

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Since we're still practicing safe social distancing, we will bring our July Speaker to you virtually through the Zoom online meeting platform! You must register for this presentation in order to attend. You may do so by using the link below:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUtcemvqDstH9JovkhgpaH2-6pBl7y1an24

Please watch your email, as you should also receive an email inviting you attend. The email will include any up to date changes (if any) on meeting times etc. You may also register using the link in the email, however it is only necessary to register once.  

We'll have the online chat feature available to us during the talk, and once the presentation is over, we can open up the audio lines for more questions.  I'm excited that this we're able to get together in this fashion, and I hope you can join us then.  We hope to see you online with us on Friday evening July 9th !

Joe Khalaf

President

Houston Astronomical Society