TESS is a spacecraft carrying a super-space telescope to carry out a mission to hunt for potentially habitable planets in the galaxy.
According to a recent report from NASA, the TESS spacecraft has encountered a brand new astronomical object dubbed “micronova”.
“Micronovae are unique events, but still small events on astronomical scale,” concluded the team led by astronomer Simone Scaringi from Durham University. head.
The team said they were analyzing data from the TESS spacecraft when they detected three bright beams of light coming from the three star systems TV Columbae, EI Ursae Majoris and ASASSN-19bh. The beams that “hit” the TESS are micronovae.
Micronovae originate from white dwarfs in the universe.
The two micronovae come from the white dwarfs TV Columbae and EI Ursae Majoris. But the third micronova, requires more observations with the X-Shooter instrument on a type of supermassive telescope.
Micronovae show up in telescope data as bright optical beams that last for several hours. It occurs at the magnetic poles of white dwarfs, where a lot of hydrogen is stored. Sometimes they are overloaded and create small explosions, firing in beams of light.
This event is rare but much smaller in scale than a supernova event – the final explosion tore apart a white dwarf star.
White dwarfs are essentially the remains of stars, created after a star similar to the Sun runs out of energy and is exhausted after a long time.
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