TESS in the Solar System

Abstract

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), launched successfully on 18th of April, 2018, will observe nearly the full sky and will provide time-series imaging data in ∼27-day-long campaigns. TESS is equipped with 4 cameras; each has a field-of-view of 24 × 24 degrees. During the first two years of the primary mission, one of these cameras, Camera #1, is going to observe fields centered at an ecliptic latitude of 18 degrees. While the ecliptic plane itself is not covered during the primary mission, the characteristic scale height of the main asteroid belt and Kuiper belt implies that a significant amount of small solar system bodies will cross the field-of-view of this camera. Based on the comparison of the expected amount of information of TESS and Kepler/K2, we can compute the cumulativeétendues of the two optical setups. This comparison results in roughly comparable opticalétendues, however the netétendue is significantly larger in the case of TESS since all of the imaging data provided by the 30-minute cadence frames are downlinked rather than the pre-selected stamps of Kepler/K2. In addition, many principles of the data acquisition and optical setup are clearly different, including the level of confusing background sources, full-frame integration and cadence, the field-of-view centroid with respect to the apparent position of the Sun, as well as the differences in the duration of the campaigns. As one would expect, TESS will yield time-series photometry and hence rotational properties for only brighter objects, but in terms of spatial and phase space coverage, this sample will be more homogeneous and more complete. Here we review the main analogues and differences between the Kepler/K2 mission and the TESS mission, focusing on scientific implications and possible yields related to our Solar System.

Thermal properties of slowly rotating asteroids: results from a targeted survey

“…The TESS mission is observing in a similar cadence to the Kepler Space Telescope. Moreover, unlike in the case of Kepler, full frames are going to be downlinked, so TESS data are going to be perfect for extensive studies of slow rotators (Pál et al 2018). It is also possible that the shape models that best fit visual lightcurves were not the best possible ones from the thermal point of view, so the varied-shape TPM method (Hanuš et al 2015), or simultaneous fitting of visual and thermal data using a convex inversion TPM ( Ďurech et al 2017) could help to resolve issues with unconstrained solutions.…”

First results on RR Lyrae stars with the TESS space telescope: untangling the connections between mode content, colors and distances

“…These are caused by a fainter and a brighter asteroid crossing the photometric aperture, respectively. Even with the TESS telescopes avoiding the vicinity of the Ecliptic, large numbers of asteroids cross the fields of view, especially that of Camera #1, closest to the Ecliptic (Pál et al 2018(Pál et al , 2020.…”

A PSF-based Approach to TESS High quality data Of Stellar clusters (PATHOS) – I. Search for exoplanets and variable stars in the field of 47 Tuc

“…In addition, TESS produces onboard stacked images of the entire field of view, with a cadence of 30-minute (Full-Frame Images, FFIs). The FFIs allow us to extract light curves for all objects with V 17 that fall within the field of view of each sector, giving us not only the possibility to widen the search of exoplanets to a huge number of stars, but also to produce results in other fields, like asteroseismology, analysis of Solar System objects (Pál et al 2018), variable stars, supernovae (e.g. Vallely et al 2019), and other Galactic and extragalactic sources.…”