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TESS Finds Hidden Planet Through Cosmic Coincidence | Science News
NASA’s TESS telescope, built to hunt planets by detecting dips in starlight, stumbled upon a cosmic surprise: Gaia23bra b, a planet orbiting a star 40,000 light-years away—far beyond its designed range. The discovery began when ESA’s Gaia spacecraft spotted a brief stellar brightening caused by gravitational microlensing, a rare event where a star’s gravity bends light from a background star. If a planet orbits the foreground star, it creates tiny ripples in the magnified light. Gaia saw the initial flash but lacked the resolution to confirm a planet. Enter TESS, which happened to be…
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