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TESS Data Search and Download

Kyle Koeller edited this page Apr 1, 2023 · 2 revisions

Intro

The tess_data_search.py file uses the TIC number from Simbad and searches all of the online TESS database for this system. If the program finds your system it will then find which sectors this system was images in and provide them as an output.

Usage

The program then downloads the Full Frame Image (FFI) at a pixel size of 30x30 (about as large as one can get). For reference each pixel is a 21 arcseconds (0.35 arcmin). This downloaded file is a single fits file that has each individual FFI inside of it. The tess_data_search.py program sends this file to the tesscut.py program to extract each individual image from this fits file to local specified directory that the user enters after each raw TESS file is downloaded but before the tesscut.py file extracts each image.

When the program asks for the file path that all the extracted TESS images will go, the user must enter a standard file path C:\Users\Kyle (for example) but also add a prefix that you would want the images to have. So the full entry should look like this: C:\Users\Kyle\NSVS_12345_. The reasoning for this is because in the code, outfile = outprefix + 'tess_%05d.fits' % (i,) and this tells the code to append the prefix line (as the example above) to produce the following outfile: C:\Users\Kyle\NSVS_12345_tess_00001.fits in the case of the very first image. It goes to 5 zeroes because TESS data can produce tens of thousands of images potentially.

Features

Individual Sectors

This allows for the option of either downloading all sector data or choosing individual sectors. This was added for either needing the latest sector or to re-download a sector. There is no reason to have to download all the data all over again.

BJD-HJD

The program will convert the BJD given by TESS and give a corresponding HJD and place both values into the header of each image. This gives options for the user to use either if needed and not be stuck with BJD only.

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