TESS Maps Symphony of Pulsating Red Giant Stars

Using TESS data, researchers have mapped out an all-sky set of red giant stars based on stellar measurements, creating a stellar symphony based on their vibrations.

IMAGE: Red giant stars near and far sweep across the sky in this illustration. Measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite have identified more than 158,000 pulsating red giants across nearly the entire sky. Such discoveries hold great potential for exploring the detailed structure of our home galaxy. CREDIT: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KBRwyle)

I feel like we’ve reported on a lot of TESS stories lately, and that’s actually unsurprising as the TESS Science Conference has been going on this week. I thought all the stories coming out would be about exoplanets, but it turns out, the instruments on TESS are sensitive enough to collect all kinds of data about stars, not just exoplanet transits.

In work presented at the conference, Marc Hon gave an overview of a new all-sky map of red giant stars based on stellar measurements collected over the first two years of the TESS mission. The team was able to determine the masses and sizes of these stars across almost the entire sky, and in doing so, also measured the oscillations of the red giants, creating a symphony.