Note: Single-source report; awaiting corroboration.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has released its most comprehensive image of the night sky, pinpointing nearly 6,000 known or suspected exoplanets. This mosaic is composed of data from 96 sectors observed between April 2018 and September 2025, at the end of TESS’s second extended mission. The image marks nearly 700 confirmed exoplanets and over 5,000 candidates awaiting verification, shown as blue and orange dots across the sky.
According to NASA, TESS uses four cameras to observe each sector for about a month, monitoring brightness variations of tens of thousands of stars. These fluctuations can signal orbiting planets, helping scientists identify multiple types of worlds, from ones like Mercury to planets larger than Jupiter. Some may orbit within their stars’ habitable zones, where liquid water could exist.
The mosaic also highlights astronomical features such as the bright plane of the Milky Way and the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, satellite galaxies located hundreds of thousands of light-years away. Researchers note that alongside exoplanet discoveries, TESS’s vast dataset supports studies of young star streams, galactic dynamics, and tracks near-Earth asteroids, demonstrating the mission's wide scientific impact.