name: evo-tess-exoplanet
description: Detects exoplanet transit periods in TESS light curves obscured by stellar activity. Workflow: filter quality flags, remove outliers, subtract stellar variability (flattening), run Transit Least Squares (TLS) to find the best period. Use when the task involves finding an exoplanet period from a TESS light curve with strong stellar rotation signals.
TESS Exoplanet Detection with Stellar Activity Removal
Detect exoplanet periods in TESS light curves where strong stellar activity (rotational modulation) masks the transit signal.
Workflow
- Load and filter: Read the data file, filter quality flag=0, remove outliers via sigma clipping.
- Remove stellar activity: Use lightkurve flatten() with an appropriate window length.
- Period search: Run Transit Least Squares (TLS) on the cleaned, flattened light curve.
- Output: Write the best period to /root/period.txt rounded to 5 decimal places.
Key Decisions
- Outlier removal: sigma=3 sigma clipping
- Stellar activity removal: lightkurve flatten() with an appropriate window length
- Period search: TLS, which is more sensitive than Lomb-Scargle for transit-shaped signals
- Always include flux_err in TLS call
Scripts
- scripts/utils.py: Contains load_and_filter(), remove_stellar_activity(), find_period_tls(), write_period()
