Mission Overview

TESS Eclipsing Binaries ("TESS-EBs")

 

Primary Investigator: Andrej Prša

HLSP Authors: Andrej Prša, Angela Kochoska, Kyle Conroy, Nora Eisner, Daniel Hey, Luc IJspeert, Ethan Kruse, Scott Fleming, Cole Johnston, Martti Kristiansen, Daryll LaCourse, Danielle Mortensen, Joshua Pepper, Keivan Stassun, Guillermo Torres

Released: 2022-06-29

Updated: 2022-06-29

Primary Reference(s): Prša et al. 2022

DOI: 10.17909/t9-9gm4-fx30

Citations: See ADS Statistics

Read Me

Logo with TESS, a binary, and an eclipsing light curve.
TESS-EBs is a catalog containing locations, ephemerides, and basic lightcurve properties for eclipsing binary stars in TESS data.

Overview

TESS-EBs is a catalog containing locations, ephemerides and basic light curve properties for eclipsing binary stars found in data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).  Prša et al. 2022 discuss the selection criteria for eclipsing binary candidates, the detection of hither-to unknown eclipsing systems, the determination of ephemerides, the validation and triage process, and the derivation of heuristic estimates for the ephemerides. They also present statistical properties of the sample and qualitative estimates of completeness. Instead of keeping to the widely used discrete classes, the authors propose a binary star morphology classification based on a dimensionality reduction algorithm.

The current version on MAST (v1.0) contains about 4580 eclipsing binary stars found in the first two years (Sectors 1-26) of TESS 2-minute cadence Light Curve Files (LCFs). The catalog will continue to be updated with new sectors of data as they become available, and will later be broadened to include all eclipsing binaries found in Full Frame Images (FFIs). The deliverables presented here are curated by the TESS Eclipsing Binary Working Group, an open group of professional and citizen scientists.

Data Products

The catalog's file name in v1.0 is "hlsp_tess-ebs_tess_lcf_s0001-s0026_tess_v1.0_cat.csv", which will change in future data releases following this pattern:

hlsp_tess-ebs_tess_<tessproduct>_<sectors>_tess_<ver>_cat.csv

where:

  • <tessproduct> = some dash-separated combination of "lcf" (Light Curve Files), "tpf" (Target Pixel Files), and/or "ffi" (Full Frame Images), referring to the TESS products from which the detections and ephemerides were derived. In v1.0, all information was derived solely from LCFs, so this field is "lcf" for now.
  • <sectors> = the dash-separated range of sectors covered by the catalog. In v1.0, this field is s0001-s0026, meaning TESS Sectors 1 through 26.
  • <ver> = MAST version number of the catalog, e.g. "v1.0".

The catalog is a single table, with data columns and their units described in the README, and additional information available in the paper.

Rows in the TESS-EBs catalog table are uniquely identified by the combination of the tess_id and signal_id columns. The signal_id column enumerates distinct ephemerides associated with a single tess_id (additional events that do not fold to the original ephemeris, background EBs that are visible in the same lightcurve due to the coarse spatial resolution of TESS, etc.).

Data product types:

_cat.csv Catalog table in a comma-separated-values file

 

Data Access

Multiple options are available for accessing the TESS-EBs catalog, including direct download of the full catalog, SQL queries on MAST CasJobs, and a Villanova-hosted live version of the catalog separate from MAST.

Table download:

The catalog is a single table which can be retrieved as a comma-separated-values (CSV) file at this link:
hlsp_tess-ebs_tess_lcf-ffi_s0001-s0026_tess_v1.0_cat.csv

MAST CasJobs:

TESS-EBs is also available through MAST CasJobs, which allows for SQL queries and the ability to cross-match TESS-EBs to other catalogs that have been added to MAST CasJobs, including Gaia and Pan-STARRS. You must register for a MAST CasJobs account from there if you do not already have one; note that MAST CasJobs accounts are separate from STScI accounts.

After logging in, you can see information about the TESS-EBs table by following the "MyDB" tab (in the top menu bar) to "HLSP_TESS_EBs" (in the drop-down menu at the top-left). You can click on the catalog table TESS_EBs and then hit the Sample button to get some example rows. The column names and data types are available in the Table Schema underneath the Notes and Sample buttons.

To query the database, navigate to the "Query" tab (in the top menu bar) and select "HLSP_TESS_EBs" (from the Context drop-down menu). You can then enter your SQL query. For short queries that execute in less than 60 seconds, you can hit the "Quick" button and the results of your query will be displayed below, where you can export them as needed. For longer queries, you can select an output table (otherwise a default like MyDB.MyTable will be used), hit the "Submit" button, and when finished your output table will be available in both the MyDB and Query tabs.

Here is an example query which joins TESS-EBs to Gaia DR2 via the pre-matched TESS Input Catalog (TIC), then to Gaia EDR3 via the Gaia DR2-to-EDR3 match table. This query retrieves TESS-EBs ephemera for eclipsing binaries with orbital periods shorter than one day, alongside Gaia EDR3 parallaxes, source IDs, and magnitudes corresponding to their TIC-matched Gaia DR2 source. The "left outer joins" mean that eclipsing binaries are included even if they don't have a Gaia DR2 source match in the TIC or a corresponding Gaia EDR3 match.

SELECT ebs.*, edr3.source_id, edr3.parallax, edr3.phot_g_mean_mag
FROM TESS_EBs AS ebs
JOIN TESS_v82.catalogRecord AS tic ON ebs.tess_id=tic.ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN GAIA_EDR3.dr2_neighbourhood AS n ON tic.GAIA=n.dr2_source_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN GAIA_EDR3.gaia_source AS edr3 ON n.dr3_source_id=edr3.source_id
WHERE ebs.period < 1.0

Note that there are two reasons that a given tess_id may span multiple rows in the output of the above query: that tess_id may occur multiple times in the TESS-EBs table with different signal_id values, and/or the GAIA_EDR3.dr2_neighbourhood table may have matched multiple Gaia EDR3 sources to its Gaia DR2 source (in which case the row from TESS-EBs will be duplicated in the output table for each Gaia EDR3 source).

  • A web-based SQL interface to query and cross-match between catalogs. Export tables, saved queries, long query submissions.
Alternative option:

Separate from MAST services, a live version of the catalog can also be browsed interactively on Villanova's portal, which is maintained by the TESS-EBs team without MAST support.

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