Mission Overview
TESS FFI Image Subtraction Light Curves from the T16 Project (T16)
Primary Investigator: Joel Hartman
HLSP Authors: Joel Hartman, Gaspar Bakos, Luke Bouma, and Zoltan Csubry
Released: 2025-02-18
Updated: 2025-02-18
Primary Reference(s): Hartman et al. 2025
DOI: 10.17909/8nxx-tw70
Citations: See ADS Statistics (Coming Soon)
Overview
The T16 team present light curves for stars with T<16 mag observed in the Full-Frame Images (FFIs) of Cycle 1 of the NASA TESS mission. These light curves were extracted from subtracted images produced by the Cluster Difference Imaging Survey (CDIPS; Bouma et al. 2019). The team makes public the raw image subtraction light curves, together with light curves detrended against instrumental systematics. The detrended light curves generally have comparable precision, and in some cases better precision, than light curves for the same stars generated by other projects from the same TESS observations. The un-detrended light curves can be used to study high amplitude variable stars that are difficult to study with other publicly available light curves.
Data Products
Each target's light curve file is stored in a sub-directory based on the Sector it was observed in, as a four-digit, zero-padded string preceded by an "s". The light curves are further divided into sub-directories based on the camera and CCD number they are on. For example, "s0001/cam1-ccd1/" for Sector 1 light curves that are on Camera 1, CCD 1.
Data file naming convention:
hlsp_t16_tess_ffi_s<sector>-cam<cam>-ccd<ccd>-<gaiaid>_tess_v01_llc.fits
where:
- <sector> = The Sector, represented as a 4-digit, zero-padded string, preceded by an "s", e.g., "s0001" for Sector 1.
- <cam> = The camera number (1-4), e.g., "cam1" for Camera 1.
- <ccd> = The CCD number (1-4) for that camera, e.g., "ccd1" for CCD 1.
- <gaiaid> = The full Gaia DR2 source ID, zero-padded to 20 digits, e.g., "06481509930643180928" for Gaia DR2 ID 6481509930643180928.
Data file types:
| _llc.fits | Image subtraction light curve file |
Data Access
T16 light curves are available via the MAST Portal web search and the astroquery python package. Set "Provenance Name" to "T16" in the Portal's Advanced Search if you wish to restrict results to T16. You can also use the "Sequence Number" to limit the search to a specific Sector. You can also search on TESS Input Catalog (TIC) ID using the "Target Name" field in Advanced Search. Alternatively, to search on Gaia DR3 ID, you can search for "hlsp_t16%<gaiaid>%" in the Observation ID field.
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A web-based interface for cross-mission searches of data at MAST or the VO. Download a small number of T16 light curves.
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Search for, and retrieve, T16 data products programmatically in python based on a list of coordinates or target names.
For bulk downloads of T16 light curves, we recommend utilizing the bulk download scripts for each Sector, provided in the table below. The scripts use curl, which is likely already installed on many machines, and if not, is freely available as open source software. The bulk download scripts for the TESS Mission light curves also make use of curl. You can run each shell script directly in a terminal to retrieve the full set of files, or use a selected subset of the script; each line in the script downloads one T16 file.
Target list files are provided that contain the Gaia DR3 ID, TIC ID, RA (J2000, deg), and Dec (J2000, deg) for targets that have T16 light curves. For users with 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 T16 data products.
Year 1 (Sectors 1-13)
| TESS Sector | Number of Light Curves | Total Data Volume | Bulk Download Script |
|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
2,390,867 |
2.3 TB |