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Mission Overview

Catalog of Integrated Light Star Cluster Light Curves in TESS (ELK)

 

Primary Investigator:  Tobin Wainer

HLSP Authors:  Tobin Wainer

Released:  2025-02-04

Updated:  2025-02-04

Primary Reference(s):  Wainer et al. 2023a, Wainer et al. 2023b

DOI:  10.17909/f4kb-vc30

Citations:  See ADS Metrics

Read Me

 
Image shows six plots of the star clusters that have ELK light curves in the Milky Way, SMC, and LMC. Comparisons include the logarithm of cluster radii in arcseconds, median light curve TESS magnitudes, and cluster ages, in addition to the distributions of clusters on the sky/relative to the Milky Way's galactic center.
Properties of the star clusters whose elk​ light curves are available as HLSPs. The top row shows the distribution of the Milky Way clusters in Galactocentric radius and height above the plane, and of the SMC and LMC clusters in RA and Dec, colored by their ages. The bottom panels show the distributions of cluster angular radius (left), median TESS magnitude of the integrated light (center), and log(age) of the clusters (right). Background (g-band) images of the LMC and SMC are from the SMASH survey (Nidever et al 2017; Nidever et al. 2021).

Overview

The team presents integrated light TESS light curves from the publicly available elk​ code (Wainer et al. 2023a). The light curves here are integrated over an aperture and contain many blended sources. The first data release are light curves for entire star clusters in the Milky Way and Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. The process for selecting these clusters, and the light curve correction are described in Wainer et al. (2023b). All data products can easily be opened and analyzed with elk​.

Data Products

Each fits file contains a header with an overview of each target's contents, with light curves for specific TESS sectors in extensions.

Data file naming convention:

hlsp_elk_tess_ffi_<targ>_tess_<ver>_llc.fits

where:

  • <targ> represents the target name, usually in the form of cluster-member
  • <ver> represents the version number

Data file types:

_llc.fits Light curve file.

Data Access

Citations

Please remember to cite the appropriate paper(s) below and the DOI if you use these data in a published work. 

Note: These HLSP data products are licensed for use under CC BY 4.0.

References

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