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The TESS mission has several data products ranging from the TESS input catalog to a catalog of planet candidates. Here we give an overview of what information is in each data product, how it is produced and how the data is formatted.

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Photometric Data Product

Graphical view of TESS Data Products

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  • Full Frame Images (FFI, ffi.fits): These files contain the long cadence time series of the entire field of view. See Section 3 of the Science Product Handbook for information about the calibrated and the uncalibrated versions of these files.
  • Target Pixel Files (TPF, .tp.fits): These files contain a time series of the raw and calibrated pixels downloaded at the 2-minute cadence.
  • Light Curve Files (LCF, .lc.fits):  These files contain the simple aperture photometry flux time series derived from the calibrated short-cadence pixels. It also contains a conditioned light curve that attempts to remove all signals except for astrophysical ones by co-trending against basis vectors derived from all stars observed in short cadence on the same camera.

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Target Catalogs

  • TESS Input Catalog (TIC): Catalog of stars used by the TESS mission to select targets to download at short cadence. The TIC is available through the MAST portal and via the API.
  • Catalog Target List (CTL): Subset of the TIC containing each science groups priorities to obtain short cadence observations.

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Planet Search Products

For each TCE found, the following products are produced by the TESS Science Processing Pipeline.

  • DV Time Series Files (.dvt.fits): These files contain the sector-stitched, detrended and whitened light curves searched by the Pipeline. All TCEs found on a star in one search are contained in the same file. 
  • DV Reports (.dvr.pdf): These pdf files contain plots and statistics for each TCE. For example, the reports contain plots of folded light curves and in- and out-of transit difference images.
  • DV One-Page Summary (.dvs.pdf): This one page summary contains a quick overview of each TCE and much of the most important information about the TCE to determine if the signal is likely caused by a transit or shows evidence of being caused by an eclipsing binary or instrumental noise.

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Results Catalogs

  • Threshold Crossing Events (TCE): List of ephemerides (TIC number, Period, epoch) of signals that are highly correlated with a transit train. For each TCE, the project provides a highly detrended light curve file and a report showing relevant plots to evaluate whether the signal is a planet.
  • TESS Objects of Interest (TOI):  Table containing the list of signals that are consistent being a transiting planet. This catalog provides a disposition of either planet candidate or false positive which can change as more information is gathered about a target from follow-up and additional analysis of the data.

Engineering Files