Mission Overview
TESS Lightcurves From The MIT Quick-Look Pipeline ("QLP")
Primary Investigator: Chelsea X. Huang
HLSP Authors:
Sector 1 onwards: Chelsea X. Huang, Andrew Vanderburg, András Pál, Lizhou Sha, Liang Yu, Willie Fong, Michael Fausnaugh, Avi Shporer, Natalia Guerrero, Roland Vanderspek, George Ricker
Sectors 27 onwards: Michelle Kunimoto, Willie Fong, Evan Tey, Avi Shporer, Natalia Guerrero, Michael Fausnaugh, Roland Vanderspek, George Ricker
Released: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Primary Reference(s): Huang et al. 2020a, Huang et al. 2020b
Citations: See ADS Statistics
Read Me | Data Product Description

Overview
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the first high-precision full-sky photometry survey in space. The MIT QLP team produced light curves from a magnitude limited (TESS Magnitude smaller than 13.5) set of stars and other stationary luminous objects from the TESS Full Frame Images. The QLP light curves cover the full two-year TESS Primary Mission and include 14,773,977 and 9,602,103 individual light curve segments in the Southern and Northern ecliptic hemispheres, respectively. The photometric precision roughly follows the theoretical predictions pre-launch. The data reduction process is described in the primary reference (Huang et al. 2020). Additional pages in the full QLP data validation report provide additional metrics for decision-making. These plots are useful for diagnosing whether the source of transit-like variability is on target or from a nearby blended source, which is particularly important for FFI data. Some of these data validation pages are available on the MIT TOI Portal. The first data release consists of light curves for targets in Sectors 1-26. Future deliveries of extended mission light curve data with 10 minute cadence are expected to be released in the near future, starting with Sector 27.
Acknowledgements
Please include the following acknowledgement in published material that makes use of QLP-produced High Level Science Products:
"We acknowledge the use of TESS High Level Science Products (HLSP) produced by the Quick-Look Pipeline (QLP) at the TESS Science Office at MIT, which are publicly available from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by NASA's Science Mission directorate."
The QLP team encourages users of the QLP Extended Mission HLSP (QLP light curves starting with Sector 27), which are made available on a timely and voluntary basis to the broader astronomical community, to invite one QLP team member for co-authorship and consultation on data analysis. Note that this is not a requirement for using QLP HLSP files or publishing results based on them. Please contact Michelle Kunimoto (mkuni@mit.edu) for a recommendation of which member to include if you decide to invite a QLP member to be a co-author on your QLP-based paper.
Data Products
For details on the file format and contents of the light curve files, see the Data Product Description document.
The light curve files have this data file naming convention:
hlsp_qlp_tess_ffi_<sector>-<tid>_tess_v01_llc.<exten>
where:
- <sector> = The Sector represented as a 4-digit, zero-padded string, preceded by an 's', e.g., 's0026' for Sector 26.
- <tid> = The full, 16-digit, zeo-padded TIC ID.
- <exten> = The light curve data type, either "fits" or "txt".
The light curve tar bundles and sha256 checksum files have this file naming convention:
hlsp_qlp_tess_ffi_<sector>_tess_v01_bulk-dl.<exten>
where:
- <sector> = The Sector represented as a 4-digit, zero-padded string, preceded by an 's', e.g., 's0026' for Sector 26.
- <exten> = The data file type, either "tar.gz" or "sha256".
Data file types:
_llc.fits | _llc.txt | QLP light curve. |
_bulk-dl.tar.gz | All QLP light curves for a given Sector. |
_bulk-dl.sha256 | SHA256 checksum to verify successful download of the tar.gz file. |
Data Access
Sector Availability
Each Sector will have tar files available that contain every light curve (in both FITS and ASCII text format). When available, that Sector's "Bundle" link will become active. NOTE: Each bundle is large, between 20-200 GB for Sectors 1-26, larger for the Extended Mission Sectors that will begin with Sector 27. In addition to the light curve bundles, the data will also be available in the MAST Portal and through the MAST APIs like astroquery.mast. NOTE: Currently the interactive plot tool in the Portal does not work for QLP HLSP light curves.
Target List files are provided that contain the TIC ID, R.A. (J2000, deg), and Dec.(J2000, deg) for targets that have QLP light curves. For those who have very large target lists, it is recommended you download these .csv files first to cross-match with your list of targets BEFORE you query MAST to search for and download QLP data products.