TESS-SPOC

Since the start of the TESS Mission, the TESS Science Processing Operations Center (SPOC) pipeline has been used to calibrate full-frame images (FFI) and to assign world-coordinate system information to the FFI data delivered to the MAST. The SPOC pipeline has generated target pixel files, light curves, and associated products from two-minute cadence target data, but not from FFIs (Jenkins, et al. 2016). Data provided with this release extend the SPOC pipeline processing to include targets selected from the FFIs to create target pixel and light curve files for up to 160,000 targets per sector.

Targets are selected from the FFIs using the TESS Input Catalog (TIC; Stassun et al. 2019) with a maximum of 10,000 targets per Sector on each of the sixteen TESS CCDs. Selection criteria include all two-minute cadence targets, targets bright in the near-infrared (H magnitude <=10), targets within 100 parsecs, and targets with TESS magnitude <=13.5. Details of the target selection are given in (Caldwell et al. 2020). The data products for the TESS-SPOC FFI targets are the same as for the two-minute cadence targets: calibrated target pixel files, simple aperture photometry flux time series, presearch data conditioning corrected flux time series, and cotrending basis vectors (CBV) sampled at the FFI cadence. The initial release includes TESS-SPOC FFI data products for the TESS northern hemisphere Sectors 14-26.

Sector Availability

Each Sector will have tar files available that contain every light curve and target pixel file, and another tar file with the CBV files for that Sector.  When available, that Sector's "Bundle" links will become active.  NOTE: Each of the target bundles is large, ~250 GB for Sectors 1-26, larger for the Extended Mission Sectors that will begin with Sector 27.  The CBV bundles are not very large.  In addition to the bundles, the target 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 TESS-SPOC 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 TESS-SPOC target pixel files created.  Most, but not all, also have light curve files created for them.  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 TESS-SPOC data products.

Tips On Using Portal and astroquery.mast With TESS-SPOC Data

How Do I Do A Search For Only Mission-Produced Light Curves, Only TESS-SPOC Light Curves, Or Both?

I Have One Or More Targets With Known TIC IDs, How Do I Retrieve The Light Curves For Them Efficiently?