Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is a space telescope for NASA's Explorer program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on 18 April 2018, atop a Falcon 9 launch vehicle and was placed into a highly elliptical 13.70-day orbit around the Earth. The first light image from TESS was taken on 7 August 2018, and released publicly on 17 September 2018.
An exoplanet is a planet located outside the Solar System. The first evidence of an exoplanet was noted as early as 1917, but was not recognized as such until 2016; no planet discovery has yet come from that evidence. What turned out to be the first detection of an exoplanet was published among a list of possible candidates in 1988, though not confirmed until 2003. The first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star was made in 1995, when a giant planet was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Pegasi. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method and the radial-velocity method. As of 1 February 2024, there are 5,606 confirmed exoplanets in 4,136 planetary systems, with 889 systems having more than one planet. This is a list of the most notable discoveries.
Kepler-42, formerly known as KOI-961, is a red dwarf located in the constellation Cygnus and approximately 131 light years from the Sun. It has three known extrasolar planets, all of which are smaller than Earth in radius, and likely also in mass.
TOI-677 b is a confirmed "warm" super-Jupiter exoplanet orbiting TOI-677, its host star, in the Ophiuchus constellation, about 466 ly (143 pc) away from Earth. The planet was discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) using the transit method, in which the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star is measured. Discovery of the exoplanet was announced on 13 November 2019.
TOI-700 is a red dwarf 101.4 light-years away from Earth located in the Dorado constellation that hosts TOI-700 d, the first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
GJ 3470 is a red dwarf star located in the constellation of Cancer, 96 light-years away from Earth. With a faint apparent magnitude of 12.3, it is not visible to the naked eye. It hosts one known exoplanet.
TOI-561 is an old, metal-poor, Sun-like star, known to have multiple small planets. It is an orange dwarf, estimated to be 10.5 billion years old, and about 79% the mass and 85% the radius of Sol, Earth's sun.
Kepler-1708b is a Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-1708, located in the constellation of Cygnus approximately 5,600 light years away from Earth. It was first detected in 2011 by NASA's Kepler mission using the transit method, but was not identified as a candidate planet until 2019. In 2021, a candidate Neptune-sized exomoon in orbit around Kepler-1708b was found by astronomer David Kipping and colleagues in an analysis using Kepler transit data.
HIP 67522 b is a hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting the G-type star HIP 67522, located approximately 415 light-years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, discovered using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). It is currently the youngest hot Jupiter discovered, at an age of only 17 million years; it is also one of the youngest transiting planets of any type, and one of only four others less than 100 million years old to have the angle between its orbit and its host star's rotation measured, at 5.8+2.8
−5.7 degrees. This planet, in turn, may help in knowing how other hot Jupiters form.
HD 260655 is a relatively bright and cool M0 V red dwarf star located 33 light-years away from the Solar System in the constellation of Gemini. HD 260655 has two confirmed rocky planets, named HD 260655 b and HD 260655 c, that were discovered in 2022. Both planets were detected by the TESS mission and confirmed independently with archival and new precise radial velocity data obtained with the HIRES observatory since 1998, and the CARMENES survey instruments since 2016.
TOI-1452 b is a confirmed super-Earth exoplanet, possibly a water world, orbiting a red-dwarf star TOI-1452 about 100 light-years away in the Draco constellation. The exoplanet is about 70% larger in diameter than Earth, and roughly five times as massive.
TOI-1227 b is one of the youngest transiting exoplanets discovered, alongside K2-33b and HIP 67522 b. The exoplanet TOI-1227 b is about 11±2 million years old and currently 9.6 R🜨 large. It will become a 3-5 R🜨 planet in about 1 billion years, because the planet is still contracting. TOI-1227 b orbits its host star every 27.36 days.
TOI-5678 b is a Neptune-like exoplanet, located 539 light-years away, that orbits a G-type star. It was found in 2023, located in the constellation Pegasus.
TOI-270, also known as L 231-32, is a red dwarf star 73.3 light-years away in the constellation Pictor. It has about 39% the mass and 38% the radius of the Sun, and a temperature of about 3,506 K. TOI-270 hosts a system of three known exoplanets.
HD 152843 is a single star with a pair of close-orbiting exoplanets, located in the northern constellation of Hercules. It is positioned at a distance of 356 light years from the Sun based on parallax measurements, and at that range is too faint to be viewed with the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 8.85. The system is receding further away with a radial velocity of 10 km/s.
TOI-672 b is a Neptune-like exoplanet, located 218 light-years away. The exoplanet was discovered in the year 2023.
TOI-4603 b is a gas giant exoplanet orbiting HD 245134, a F-type subgiant star located 731 light-years away, in the constellation of Taurus. It orbits its host star at a distance of 0.0888 astronomical units (13,280,000 km), completing one orbit every 7 days around it. With a density of 14.1 g/cm3, it is one of the densest exoplanets known. The planet is just 4% larger than Jupiter, but is 12.9 times more massive, being located in the mass limit between planets and brown dwarfs.
