New Kepler/TESS Plugin Available

This is really slick! Thank you for all your good work on this, Cliff!

-Sara

Absolutely! Thanks Cliff.

As you know, I've been a little pre-occupied for the last few weeks, so it's wonderful to see this great work happening. 

David

Hi Cliff,

thanks for this new tool.
I might not be doing something correctly but when I import TESS data the dates are treated as the Kepler files (BJD-2454833) and not taking into account that TESS shows dates as BJD-2457000.
I uploaded the plugin to its latest version but I keep seeing the same thing.
Is it me or is this something that needs to be corrected?

Cheers,
Sebastian

Sebastian,

This does not sound right.

What you describes sounds like the behavior before I made the change.  There are a couple of ways to see that the new version is installed.  In the File menu it should read “Kepler/TESS” instead of just “Kepler”.  Once a light curve is loaded, the time on the plot will read BJD instead of JD.

So if you check and find that you do have the new plugin running, then I need to get the light curve file you are using and analyze it because the date offset was the main thing I changed.  The old Kepler plugin already loaded TESS data.

If you find that you do not have the new version of the plugin, then I need to know how you installed it.  Did you 1) download the jar file and drop it in your vstar_plugins folder 2) download the ZIP of all plugins, extract the jar from it or 3) use VStar’s plugin manager.

If by chance you used 3) then check that in the VStar preferences that the directory for plugins ends with “2.20.0” and not “2.17.0”.

I hope we get this resolved quickly,
Cliff

I've somewhat reworked Kepler/TESS FITS plugin v2.0.

The existing plugin does not take into account reference magnitude which is specified in both Kepler and TESS variants of light curve FITS files.

Kepler FITS has KEPMAG= keyword in the FITS header, similar TESSMAG= keyword exists in TESS FITS files. Those keywords specify Kepler and TESS <mean> magnitudes of target stars respectively.

So it would be natural to make adjustments of magnitudes, extracted from Kepler/TESS FITSes to these values instead of generating some arbitrary instrumental magnitudes.

I made the required changes in the plugin and changed its version to v2.1. Now median magnitude for data series is adjusted to KEPMAG/TESSMAG after reading a file.

Another minor improvement: modified plugin extracts "OBJECT=" FITS value and sets it as a star name.

Some other changes where made, see *.java source for details.

The modified plugin (*.jar and source *.java) can be downloaded by the link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GQd97-BZctHbq9_3lGCu_4vzJiEHv6mc

To install the new version, simply overwrite org.aavso.tools.vstar.external.plugin.KeplerFITSObservationSource.jar in vstar_plugins folder by the new one. "vstar_plugins" folder is located in your home folder.

If you find the described changes useful, please let me know. It would be also good to make some independent testing.

Best regards,

Max.

Hi All,

the new VStar TESS plugin is great for displaying the excellent light curves from this satellite. I'd like to congratulate to the people who developed the plugin.

However on the MAST Portal I've noticed that occassionally the detrended light curve (files ending in _lc.fits) are significatly distorted compared with the _tp.fits file. The attached image is a screen capture from the MAST Portal webpage showing the _lc.fits (orange) and _tp.fits (blue) light curves of the eclipsing binary V Pup.

It would appear the detrending process was faulty.

Unfortunately the _tp.fits files cannot be loaded into VStar using the current TESS plugin. It would be extremely useful if a future version of the plugin could import both _lc.fits and _tp.fits files.

Cheers,

Mark

Hi Mark,

I've added a selection dialog to the plugin. The plugin has (probably temporarily) different Java class so it may co-exist with the current Kepler/TESS plugin v 2.0. You can download it from my Google drive: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1w9mxWT2KPI2zcNRndIVQ-6XkL91GgcUj

Take "org.aavso.tools.vstar.external.plugin.KeplerFITSObservationSource2.jar" and put it into "vstar_plugins" folder (located in your home folder). After restarting VStar you should see an additional element in the "File" menu (see attached picture). While loading TESS or Kepler FITS you will see a selection dialog (see the second attached picture).

I've tried V Pup light curve, the "raw" version looks like in the third attached picture.

I hope it will work for you. If all is OK I'll update documentation.

In both cases (corrected and raw) median magnitude is adjusted to TESSMAG (KEPMAG) value taken from FITS header.

Best regards,

Max

Hi Sara, Hi David, 

The plugin-related files are now in https://drive.google.com/open?id=1GQd97-BZctHbq9_3lGCu_4vzJiEHv6mc folder on my Google Drive.

The main class is "KeplerFITSObservationSource" again, so the new version overrides the old one. The version has been changed to 2.2.

Documentation has been updated too (identical content in three formats: docx, odt, pdf).

Best regards,

Max

Wow, thank you very much for your effors: this is a great tool in analysis of TESS data.

Davide.

Yes, thanks Max, Cliff, Sara for work on this plugin.

I just posted re: the plugin here also:

  https://www.aavso.org/comment/68927#comment-68927

David