TESS Backdrop

Check out the documentation.

tess-backdrop is a tool to 1) create a background correction for TESS images 2) apply a background correction to any block of TESS data.

What does tess-backdrop make?

tess-backdrop makes sets of fits files for every TESS sector, camera and CCD. These fits files are quite small (10s of Mb) and contain all the information needed to create a scattered light background correction for any pixel, at any time. Below is an example of the sorts of corrections tess_backdrop makes.

Each of the background estimates is fast to evaluate for any given TESS FFI dataset. This means you can apply the scattered light correction really quickly, without having to download anything else from MAST.

How do you install tess-backdrop?

You can install with pip using

pip install tess-backdrop

How do you use tess-backdrop?

There are tutorials available on our documentation pages. Here are some really simple examples. You can obtain a TESSCut TPF using lightkurve

import lightkurve as lk
tpf = lk.search_tesscut('TIC 441075486', sector=2).download(cutout_size=(20, 21), quality_bitmask=None)

You can then correct the background in the TPF using

import tess_backdrop as tbd

b = tbd.BackDrop()
b.load(sector=2, camera=1, ccd=3)
corrected_tpf = b.correct_tpf(tpf)

Or you could create a corrected light curve using

r = tbd.TESSCutCorrector(tpf, aperture_mask=tpf.create_threshold_mask())
corrected_lc = r.correct(npca_components=10, spline_timescale=1)