VDX Flicker

Survey telescopes record the brightness of hundreds of thousands of stars every few minutes, and the data are public. Most of that light is never looked at one star at a time. Known variable stars (eclipsing binaries, flare stars, pulsators) are catalogued, but an unusual dimming or burst on a star with no recorded class can pass unnoticed among thousands of ordinary curves.

VDX Flicker uses these archives to build short, ranked lists of stars worth a second look. Each list comes from a pipeline that is open, versioned and run with frozen parameters, so anyone can repeat it on the same files and get the same list. Every object on it is a candidate for follow-up, not a confirmed new phenomenon: most unusual curves turn out to be known stars, instrument artefacts or light from a neighbour.

Existing research

The data and catalogues we use come from these missions and services. We cite them as background only: VDX Research is not affiliated with any of them.

• TESS, NASA: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which observes most of the sky in sectors of about 27 days and records 2-minute light curves for selected stars. Official page
• MAST, Space Telescope Science Institute: the archive that hosts the TESS light curves processed by the SPOC pipeline, with release notes for every sector. Official page
• SIMBAD, Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg: the reference database of identifications and object types for astronomical objects outside the Solar System. Official page
• VSX, American Association of Variable Star Observers: the International Variable Star Index, the catalogue of known and suspected variable stars. Official page
• TESS Objects of Interest (TOI), ExoFOP: the list of TESS targets flagged as possible planet hosts. Official page