Mission Overview

TESS Lightcurves From The MIT Quick-Look Pipeline ("QLP")

 

Primary Investigator: Chelsea X. Huang

HLSP Authors: 

Sectors 1-26: Chelsea X. Huang, Andrew Vanderburg, András Pál, Lizhou Sha, Liang Yu, Willie Fong, Michael Fausnaugh, Avi Shporer, Natalia Guerrero, Roland Vanderspek, George Ricker

Sectors 27-55: Michelle Kunimoto, Willie Fong, Evan Tey, Avi Shporer, Natalia Guerrero (Sectors 27-39), Katharine Hesse, Michael Fausnaugh, Roland Vanderspek, George Ricker

Sectors 56 onwards: Glen Petitpas, Michelle Kunimoto, Willie Fong, Evan Tey (Sectors 56-60), Avi Shporer, Katharine Hesse, Michael Fausnaugh, Roland Vanderspek, George Ricker

Released: 2020-11-12

Updated: 2024-02-09

Primary Reference(s): Huang et al. 2020a, Huang et al. 2020bKunimoto et al. 2021Kunimoto et al. 2022

DOI: 10.17909/t9-r086-e880

Citations: See ADS Statistics

Read Me | Data Product Description

 

Slideshow

Image showing coverage of Sectors 56-69.
Footprints of Sectors 56-69.

Sky coverage for TESS QLP Sectors 56-69.

Image showing coverage of Sectors 27-55.
Footprints of Sectors 27-55.

Sky coverage for TESS QLP Sectors 27-55.

Image showing footprints of Sectors 1-26.
Footprints of Sectors 1-26.

Sky coverage for TESS QLP Sectors 1-26.

Overview

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is the first high-precision full-sky photometry survey in space. The MIT QLP team produces light curves from a magnitude limited (TESS magnitude < 13.5) set of stars and other stationary luminous objects from the TESS Full Frame Images (FFIs). The photometric precision roughly follows the theoretical predictions pre-launch. The data reduction process is described in the primary references (Huang et al. 2020a and Huang et al. 2020b). 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 QLP light curves for targets in Sectors 1-26. These data products cover the two-year TESS Primary Mission and include 14,773,977 and 9,602,103 individual light curve segments in the Southern and Northern hemispheres, respectively. The second data release consists of 10-minute cadence light curves for 9.1 million stars from the first year of the first Extended Mission (Sectors 27-39). The third data release consists of 10-minute cadence light curves for 5.7 million stars from the second year of the first Extended Mission (Sectors 40-55). Future deliveries of 200-second cadence light curves from the second Extended Mission are expected to be released starting in 2023.

For more details on QLP, please see the QLP webpage at https://tess.mit.edu/qlp/.

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".

Data file types:

_llc.fits | _llc.txt QLP light curve.  NOTE: .txt versions only available for Sectors 1-26, inclusive.

Data Access

  • A web-based interface for cross-mission searches of data at MAST or the Virtual Observatory. Download QLP light curves for a few targets.
  • Search for, and retrieve, QLP data products programmatically based on a list of coordinates or target names.

Sector Availability

Bulk download shell scripts that use curl are provided to download every light curve in FITS format; similar scripts are availble to download the light curves for Sectors 1 through 26 only in ASCII text format.  In addition to the light curve bulk download scripts, the data are also available in the MAST Portal and through the MAST APIs like astroquery.mast.

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 users that 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.

Year 5 (Sectors 56-69)

Year 6 (Sectors 70-83)

Sector 56: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 70: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 57: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 58: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 59: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 60: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 61: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 62: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 63: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 64: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 65: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 66: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 67: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 68: LC FITS  | Target List  
Sector 69: LC FITS  | Target List  

 

Year 3 (Sectors 27-39)

Year 4 (Sectors 40-55)

Sector 27: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 40: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 28: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 41: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 29: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 42: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 30: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 43: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 31: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 44: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 32: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 45: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 33: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 46: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 34: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 47: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 35: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 48: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 36: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 49: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 37: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 50: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 38: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 51: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 39: LC FITS  | Target List

Sector 52: LC FITS  | Target List

 

Sector 53: LC FITS  | Target List

 

Sector 54: LC FITS  | Target List

 

Sector 55: LC FITS  | Target List

 

Year 1 (Sectors 1-13)

Year 2 (Sectors 14-26)

Sector 1: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 14: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 2: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 15: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 3: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 16: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 4: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 17: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 5: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 18: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 6: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 19: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 7: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 20: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 8: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 21: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 9: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 22: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 10: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 23: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 11: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 24: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 12: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 25: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 13: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

Sector 26: LC FITS  | LC TXTTarget List

 

 

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