Kepler and K2 Cross Matched to VSX

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Wed, 11/14/2018 - 21:41

As I noted in this post in the VStar Forum, VStar's Kepler plugin can load both K2 and Kepler light curves for analysis.  As many people know, the TESS spacecraft is starting to deliver data and making it available to the public.  Light curves from TESS work in VStar as well.  Given that the 200,000-ish targets for TESS will be generally bright and span the entire sky, these will be of interest to AAVSO members as well.

In hopes of making Kepler and K2 (EPIC) light curves generally useful outside the Exoplanet realm, I have cross matched these against VSX.  The attached spreadsheets contain the results.  The bulk of the columns are from VSX.  The first column of each is the separation from the cross match.  As this approaches the 5" limit I used caution is advised.  The last column is the number of observations for the variable in the AID.  The kepid or the epic_id is the key to use in the MAST to locate the light curve as explained in the VStar Kepler plugin documentation.

As TESS data release progresses, a cross match against it should be possible as well.

Enjoy,

Cliff

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
TESS data

Although KEPLER plugin can read TESS light curve FITS files, resulting time scale and magnitudes are wrong. TESS uses another time starting point. TESS magnitude, I think, should be derived from TESSMAG FITS header value (I believe we can use this value as a mean magnitude value for a light curve so we can derive correct zero level). I'm thinking about creating a new plugin for TESS data (using KEPLER plugin as a template).

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Good to Know

Maksym,

That is good information to know.  I wonder if we need another plugin?  Could the existing KEPLER plugin just be generalized to recognize the light curve type from the file?

Let me know if you go ahead with modifying the existing plugin or creating another TESS specific plugin.

regards

Cliff

Affiliation
Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSAU)
Generalising

Thanks Maksym and Cliff.

Yep, it would be interesting to see whether it can be generalised. 

David