Downloading data

Searching the Kepler & TESS archive

Lightkurve provides three functions which make it easy to search and download TESS and Kepler data products from the public data archive at MAST.

search_targetpixelfile(target[, radius, …])	Search the MAST data archive for target pixel files.
search_lightcurve(target[, radius, exptime, …])	Search the MAST data archive for light curves.
search_tesscut(target[, sector])	Search the MAST TESSCut service for a region of sky that is available as a TESS Full Frame Image cutout.

Downloading data products

The search functions listed above return a SearchResult object, which provides an easy way to select and download data.

SearchResult([table])	Container for the results returned by the search functions.
SearchResult.download([quality_bitmask, …])	Download and open the first data product in the search result.
SearchResult.download_all([quality_bitmask, …])	Download and open all data products in the search result.

Filtering search results

The SearchResult object provides convenient access to the essential metadata, which enables the search results to be filtered. For example, a search result can be filtered by exposure time using result = result[result.exptime.value < 100].

SearchResult.mission	Kepler quarter or TESS sector names for each data product found.
SearchResult.year	Year the observation was made.
SearchResult.author	Pipeline name for each data product found.
SearchResult.target_name	Target name for each data product found.
SearchResult.exptime	Exposure time for each data product found.
SearchResult.distance	Distance from the search position for each data product found.
SearchResult.ra	Right Ascension coordinate for each data product found.
SearchResult.dec	Declination coordinate for each data product found.
SearchResult.table	Table containing the full search results returned by the MAST API.

API lightkurve.search_targetpixelfile