– New FITS keyword for detrended light curves. ​We have updated our detrending algorithm so our new detrended light curves will no longer be referred to as “KSP” (the name of our old detrending algorithm). All mentions of “KSP*” are replaced by “DET”. For example, the keyword “KSPSAP_FLUX”, which corresponds to our default detrended light curves, is now “DET_FLUX” instead. The addition of a keyword for detrending method (DETMET) allows for future changes to the detrending algorithm.

– New data product: systematics-corrected light curves. In addition to raw light curve values (SAP_FLUX) and detrended light curve values (DET_FLUX), we have added a new, intermediate data product, called SYS_RM_FLUX which is the light curve with systematics removed but stellar variability left intact. We hope this will support more stellar astrophysics science with QLP!

– New bit location for QLP flags. The quality flags for QLP are now represented by the 2^30 bit value. We had previously used the unused-by-FFI bit 13 (2^12) for this, but pushed it to bit 31 to avoid future clashes with POC changes. POC flags still span 2^[0–15]; see TESS Science Data Products Description Document. Bits 16-30 are unused.

Here is a summary of the changes:

• Now using “DET_FLUX” and “DET_FLUX_ERR” instead of “KSPSAP_FLUX” and “KSPSAP_FLUX_ERR” for the detrended flux and detrended flux error, respectively.
• Now using “DET_FLUX_SML” and “DET_FLUX_LAG” instead of “KSPSAP_FLUX_SML” and “KSPSAP_FLUX_LAG”.
• Introduced a new header variable in Sector-56 called “SYS_RM_FLUX” which contains the systematics-removed flux light curve (intermediate data product between raw and systematics-corrected+detrended).
• Introduced a new header variable called “DETMET” which provides the name of the detrending method for reference (QSP vs KSP).
• We have moved the QLP flags from bit 13 (2^12) to bit 31 (2^30) to prevent any clashes with possible changes to POC flags.

The Quick-Look Pipeline searches for transit signals in the multi-sector light curves of several hundreds of thousand stars observed by TESS every 27.4-day sector. The computational expense of the planet search has grown considerably over time, especially as the TESS observing baseline continues to increase in the second Extended Mission. Starting in Sector 59, QLP has switched to a significantly faster GPU-based transit search capable of searching an entire sector in only ~1 day, which allows for the searching of a finer frequency grid than was possible previously. Despite searching up to ∼ 10 times more frequencies, the GPU implementation was still ∼40 times faster.

A full description of the data release notes for the GPU based transit search is available here. 

Light curves feature many kinds of variability, including instrumental systematics, intrinsic stellar variability such as pulsations, and flux changes caused by transiting exoplanets or eclipsing binary stars. Detrending is a key pre-planet-search data processing step that aims to remove variability not due to transits. This data release note describes improvements to the Quick-Look Pipeline’s detrending algorithm via the inclusion of quaternion data to remove short-timescale systematics. We describe updates to our procedure, intermediate data products outputted by the algorithm, and improvements to light curve precision.

A full description of the data release notes for the improved detrending algorithm is available here. 

TESS observed the ecliptic plane in Sectors 42 – 46. These sectors overlap with campaigns from the K2 mission, providing a unique opportunity for multi-mission light curve analysis. This data release note describes the combined analysis of K2 and TESS light curves as part of the Quick-Look Pipeline(QLP) procedure, which processes light curves for all targets in TESS Full-Frame Images (FFIs) down to TESS magnitude T= 13.5. We describe updates to our codebase, and the planet transit search, candidate triage, and report generation that are affected by this combined analysis.

A full description of the data release notes for the combined K2 and TESS Analysis is available here.