TESS: The Movie. Sector 17, Full Field of View

This is an animation of the 17th sector of data from NASA's TESS space telescope, the 4th sector in the northern hemisphere. TESS takes an image of the same region of sky every 30 minutes for a month (one sector) to study the stars and search for exoplanets. It then moves on to a new sector and new stars. Halfway through each sector (after one orbit), the spacecraft pauses data collection to turn and send data back to Earth. In this sector the Earth approached the field of view of Camera 1 toward the end of each orbit, causing numerous scattered light issues. However, the largest issue was caused by the Moon entering Camera 1's field 4 days before the end of the first orbit and causing the strong arcs through Camera's 1 and 2. The Milky Way stretches through Cameras 2 and 3. The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) can be seen in Camera 2, CCD 4. Close up views of each individual CCD in this sector are also available. Pause the video and then use , and . to move backward and forward frame by frame.

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