The TESS space telescope was able to detect 97 candidates for quadruple stars - that is, star systems consisting of four stars. The corresponding paper is available on the electronic preprint site arXiv.org and will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
TESS - Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - a satellite designed to discover exoplanets by the transit method, it was developed by specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of the NASA Small Research Program. Its field of view is much wider than its predecessors, such as the Kepler space telescope. TESS wide-angle cameras surveyed 85% of the sky, which made it possible to collect a huge amount of data. Scientists are actively using machine learning and attracting volunteers in order to process all this data as quickly as possible. Since the start of the mission, since the end of 2018, TESS has already managed to detect over 5,000 exoplanet candidates and 197 confirmed exoplanets. Among other things, it was possible to almost double the number of known candidates for quad systems.
The lead author of a new paper on 97 eclipsing quadruple star candidates is Veselin Kostov of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “Candidates were identified in TESS full-frame image data of sectors 1 to 42 using a combination of machine learning and visual inspection techniques, with extensive input from a dedicated team of volunteers,” the study authors write. “To eliminate false positives due to nearby stars or technical artifacts, we studied the light curves of objects of interest to us pixel.”
Astronomers have focused their efforts primarily on identifying triple and quadruple star systems, but the results obtained go beyond these multiple systems. It also discovered “the first six-fold eclipsing “six” star system and the first transiting circumbinary planet [revolving around several stars at once] found in one of the TESS data sectors,” the authors of the work write.
Multiple star systems can tell a lot about the paths of stellar evolution. Astronomers and astrophysicists are particularly interested in short-period multiples, stellar extinction events, Type Ia supernovae, and black hole mergers.
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