De Cat, P. ; Antoci, V. ; Appourchaux, T. ; Basu, S. ; Chaplin, B. ; Charpinet, S. ; Cunha, M. ; Handler, G. ; Hekker, S. ; Hermes, J. J. ; Huber, D. ; Kolenberg, K. ; Silva Aguirre, V. ; Stello, D. ; Szábo, R.

Invited talk presented at Large surveys with small telescopes: Past, Present, and Future (Astroplate III), Bamberg, Germany on 2019-03-13

Abstract: The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS; Ricker et al., 2015, JATIS 1, 014003) was launched on April 18, 2018, and started its scientific observations on June 25, 2018. It is gathering ultra-precise photometric observations for celestial objects with I_C ≈ 4 − 13 and an ecliptic latitude above 6 degrees. Preselected targets are observed with a cadence of 2 minutes while full-frame images are obtained every 30 minutes. In two years time, the largest part of the sky will be scanned with 26 sectors of 24 degrees x 96 degrees for a duration of 27 days each. During the first year of the mission, the satellite is pointing to the ecliptic southern hemisphere before moving on to the north in the second year of observations. Given that the sectors overlap near the ecliptic poles, the total time span of the observations of a star can last up to 351 days, depending on its ecliptic latitude. The main aim of the mission is to detect planetary transits in the light curves of nearby stars but the TESS data will be a goldmine for variable stars of all types and flavors. The observations of the first few sectors have been released by now. During this talk, I will show the importance of TESS for asteroseismology of different types of pulsating stars based on a few examples of first results.