NASA's TESS Rounds Up its First Planets

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA's TESS Rounds Up its First Planets, Snares Far-flung Supernovae

Quote

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has found three confirmed exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, in its first three months of observations.

The mission’s sensitive cameras also captured 100 short-lived changes — most of them likely stellar outbursts — in the same region of the sky. They include six supernova explosions whose brightening light was recorded by TESS even before the outbursts were discovered by ground-based telescopes.

  Read More: NASA

 

[+joc]

6 hours ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

NASA's TESS Rounds Up its First Planets, Snares Far-flung Supernovae

 

This has confused me:

Link

The planet, dubbed HD21749b is one of three small exoplanets discovered by one of NASA’s newest satellites.

...the team also reports detecting an Earth-size planet that orbits HD21749 once every 7.8 days or so. Because that planet orbits its host star even closer than HD21749b does, it would likely have a surface temperature that’s much hotter.

Can a planet actually orbit another planet?  I thought moons orbited planets...or was that just a typo kind of mistake?
 

[toast]

2 hours ago, joc said:

This has confused me: The planet, dubbed HD21749b is one of three small exoplanets discovered by one of NASA’s newest satellites.

...the team also reports detecting an Earth-size planet that orbits HD21749 once every 7.8 days or so. Because that planet orbits its host star even closer than HD21749b does, it would likely have a surface temperature that’s much hotter.

The "b" is doing the trick here. Exoplanets are named after their host star/star system plus one letter, "b" always to be the first one. The host star has the "A" but thats always dropped on one-star systems. With that mode and if we would look at our solar system from outside and would name our sun/star "Kermit", the sun would be "Kermit(-A), Mercury = "Kermit-B", Venus = "Kermit-C", Earth = "Kermit-D" and so on.

[+joc]

2 hours ago, toast said:

The "b" is doing the trick here. Exoplanets are named after their host star/star system plus one letter, "b" always to be the first one. The host star has the "A" but thats always dropped on one-star systems. With that mode and if we would look at our solar system from outside and would name our sun/star "Kermit", the sun would be "Kermit(-A), Mercury = "Kermit-B", Venus = "Kermit-C", Earth = "Kermit-D" and so on.

Ah, I see!  Thanks!  Never even noticed the b.  So...HD21749...is the star itself.