TESS pointing during Year 2

News article posted on by Tom Barclay

During certain sectors of Year 2, the Earth and/or Moon are very close to or inside the pre-planned fields-of-view of cameras 1 and 2 for long periods, reducing the number of days useful for transit detections by those two cameras to as few as 7-10 days per sector. The TESS team is assessing the optimum pointing of the spacecraft during these sectors to reduce the impact of Earth- and moon-light upon transit detections. Planned Year 2 pointings will be posted once finalized.