Running tessilator from the command line

The tessilator repository contains 2 example python modules which are executable from the command line as shell scripts.

1) run_tess_cutouts

This module calls the tessilator.tessilator.all_sources_cutout function from the tessilator.py module. This program will download postage-stamp fits files using TESSCut (Brasseur et al. 2019) and runs the tessilator analysis for all the sectors that are available for each target. To run this file simply enter:

$ run_tess_cutouts

2) run_tess_sectors

This module calls the tessilator.tessilator.all_sources_sector function from the tessilator.py module. This program performs tessilator analyses using the full-frame calibrated images (FFIC) that are stored locally on the user’s machine. Bulk FFIC downloads for each TESS sector are available at the MAST website as shell scripts which contain cURL commands to download all fits files in a given sector. To run the tessilator in this way, it is important fits files are stored such that all files in sector ‘N’ are in a subdirectory named ./sectorNN/, where NN represents a two digit integer (i.e., a trailing zero for sectors 1-9). To run this program simply enter:

$ run_tess_sectors

Note that these programs will only run after a set of input parameters are passed. This can be done by providing a set of command-line arguments after the script name, otherwise the tessilator will prompt the user for input.

Command line example

An example of running the tessilator using the supplied shell scripts would be:

$ run_tess_cutouts 1 1 1 cutouts targets.csv

The command-line arguments here instruct the tessilator to:

  1. Calculate the flux from contaminating sources

  2. Run the tessilator analysis for neighbouring contaminants

  3. Produce a plot for each lightcurve

  4. Group the output files by the name cutouts

  5. Use cutout_targets.csv as the input table containing the targets