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Astronomy: TESS will boost its search for exoplanets
- Thread starter Introversion
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I'm terribly proud to report our younger daughter is among the engineers who worked on TESS and will be at the launch.
She designed the retractable lens covers.
She designed the retractable lens covers.
Excellent technology, but I wonder if we aren't now beginning to chase the less important thing, going after exponentially expanding quantity of exoplanets, rather than concentrating on learning more detail about them. The Kepler satellite settled the issue of the numbers of exoplanets; they are everywhere we look. What we need more now is to get information on atmospheres, likelihood of liquid water being present, etc.
caw
caw
It does make some of her engineer-ish childhood behaviors more tolerable in hindsight. She was eight or so when she rigged a way to pull the end of an old jump rope to turn off the light in her room at the wall switch without getting out of bed. It involved gluing plastic pulleys to the closet door and the wall and mama wasn't happy about that, nor was the sister whose toy was supposed to have these pulleys.
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As to studying exoplanets in more detail, it must be conceded that that is very difficult to do. One needs all the light that one can get, from the planet, from the star, or from both. That is why TESS is being flown, to look for planets around relatively bright stars, so that their observers will have more photons to work with.
Our daughter has posted that TESS is "awake" with her cameras on and lens covers retracted. The first images being returned look good.
She's now working on another project she can't even talk about, but apparently a former co-worker clued her in.
She's now working on another project she can't even talk about, but apparently a former co-worker clued her in.