Photo: NASA/MIT/TESS
The Milky Way shines in a photo taken by a space telescope designed to hunt for planets circling stars far from our own solar system.
Details: The image by NASA's TESS was released on Nov. 5 and was created by piecing together 208 photos taken by the telescope during its first year gathering science from orbit.
- "Within this scene, TESS has discovered 29 exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, and more than 1,000 candidate planets astronomers are now investigating," NASA said in a statement.
How it works: TESS looks for planets by keeping an eye out for minute dips in a star's light created when a world passes in front of its star.
- By clocking these transits, scientists can gather data about a planet’s size to bring us closer to finding another world like Earth somewhere out in the galaxy.
Go deeper: The Milky Way in 3D