Every twinkling star in our galaxy tells a story of planetary systems, stellar evolution, and cosmic mysteries waiting to be unraveled. NASA’s TESS, Kepler, and K2 missions have revolutionized our understanding of exoplanets by monitoring millions of stars, detecting the subtle dimming caused by transiting worlds. But accessing this treasure trove of time-series photometry data from the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) can be daunting for researchers and citizen scientists alike.
lksearch transforms the complex process of astronomical data retrieval into elegant Python commands. This lightweight package wraps Astroquery’s MAST functionality with intuitive classes like TESSSearch, KeplerSearch, and K2Search, offering streamlined access to light curves, target pixel files, and TESScut postage stamps. Whether you’re hunting for exoplanet transits in long-cadence Kepler data or analyzing stellar variability in TESS observations, lksearch eliminates the technical barriers between you and the cosmos. Its simplified API means you can go from star name to downloadable data in just a few lines of code.
Built by the astronomy community for the astronomy community, lksearch serves everyone from graduate students conducting their first research projects to seasoned astronomers managing large-scale surveys. As part of the broader lightkurve ecosystem, it represents the democratization of space-based astronomy, making NASA’s most valuable datasets as accessible as a simple pip install.
⭐ Stars: 4
💻 Language: Python
🔗 Repository: lightkurve/lksearch