2.1 - Introduction
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.
The basic observations of the sky from TESS are time series data. An overview of these data products are shown graphically on the right. The entire set of CCDs for each sector are downloaded every 30-minutes, these are known as the Full Frame Images (FFIs). Certain small sections of sky are downloaded at a 2-minute cadence, known as the short cadence data. This short cadence data is turned into a flux time series (also known as a light curve). Those flux time series are then searched for signals consistent with a transiting planet, known as a Threshold Crossing Event (TCE). The TCEs, as well as signals found by searching the FFIs, are turned into TESS Objects of Interest (TOIs) when the data is sufficiently consistent with a transit.
