J/ApJS/276/57 Classification of periodic variable stars from TESS (Gao+, 2025)
Classification of periodic variable stars from TESS.
Gao X., Chen X., Wang S., Liu J.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser., 276, 57 (2025)>
=2025ApJS..276...57G 2025ApJS..276...57G
ADC_Keywords: Stars, variable; Photometry; Parallaxes, trigonometric; Optical;
Colors; Infrared; Magnitudes, absolute; Binaries, eclipsing
Keywords: Periodic variable stars ; Light curves ; Catalogs ;
Pulsating variable stars ; Cepheid variable stars ;
RR Lyrae variable stars ; Delta Scuti variable stars ;
Eclipsing binary stars
Abstract:
The number of known periodic variable stars has increased rapidly in
recent years. As an all-sky transit survey, the Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite (TESS) plays an important role in detecting
low-amplitude variable stars. Using 2 minute cadence data from the
first 67 sectors of TESS, we find 72,505 periodic variable stars. We
used 19 parameters including period, physical parameters, and
light-curve (LC) parameters to classify periodic variable stars into
12 subtypes using the random forest method. Pulsating variable stars
and eclipsing binaries are distinguished mainly by period, LC
parameters, and physical parameters. Classical Cepheids, Type-II
Cepheids, rotational variable stars, eruptive variable stars of the UV
Ceti type, and young stellar objects are distinguished mainly by
period and physical parameters. Compared to previously published
catalogs, 63,106 periodic variable stars (87.0%) are newly classified,
including 13 Cepheids, 27 RR Lyrae stars, ∼4600 δ Scuti variable
stars, ∼1600 eclipsing binaries, ∼34,000 rotational variable stars,
and about 23,000 other types of variable star. The purity of eclipsing
binaries and pulsation variable stars ranges from 94.2% to 99.4% when
compared to the variable star catalogs of Gaia Data Release 3 and
Zwicky Transient Facility Data Release 2. The purity of rotational
variable stars is relatively low at 83.3%. The increasing number of
variables stars is helpful to investigate the structure of the Milky
Way, stellar physics, and chromospheric activity.
Description:
As an astrophysics exploration mission, the Transiting Exoplanet
Survey Satellite (TESS) is placed in a highly elliptical 13.7 day
orbit around the Earth and uses four wide-field optical CCD cameras to
observe a 24°x96° region of the sky. The time-series
photometry is obtained in 27.4 day segments, known as sectors.
It recorded brightness measurements of selected target stars every
2 minutes and full frame images every 30 minutes. Only data from the
first 67 sectors (2018-Jul-25 to 2023-Jul-29) of TESS 2 minute cadence
photometry are used in this work.
The full LC images can be downloaded from China-VO doi: 10.12149/101482
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table5.dat 199 72505 TESS periodic variable star catalog
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See also:
II/264 : ASAS Variable Stars in Southern hemisphere (Pojmanski+, 2002-2005)
II/328 : AllWISE Data Release (Cutri+ 2013)
IV/34 : K2 Ecliptic Plane Input Catalog (EPIC) (Huber+, 2017)
IV/38 : TESS Input Catalog - v8.0 (TIC-8) (Stassun+, 2019)
II/366 : ASAS-SN catalog of variable stars (Jayasinghe+, 2018-2020)
IV/39 : TESS Input Catalog version 8.2 (TIC v8.2) (Paegert+, 2021)
I/355 : Gaia DR3 Part 1. Main source (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
I/357 : Gaia DR3 Part 3. Non-single stars (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
J/AcA/59/33 : ASAS. Variable stars cat. in Kepler field. (Pigulski+, 2009)
J/other/A+ARV/18.67 : Accurate masses & radii of normal stars (Torres+, 2010)
J/AJ/141/83 : Kepler Mission. I. Eclipsing binaries in DR1 (Prsa+, 2011)
J/AJ/142/160 : Kepler Mission. II. EBs in DR2 (Slawson+, 2011)
J/A+A/566/A43 : EPOCH Project. EROS-2 LMC periodic variables (Kim+, 2014)
J/ApJ/788/48 : X-ray through NIR photometry of NGC 2617 (Shappee+, 2014)
J/MNRAS/460/1970 : Kepler δ Sct stars amp. modulation (Bowman+, 2016)
J/ApJ/835/173 : Kepler asteroseismic LEGACY set. II. (Silva Aguirre+, 2017)
J/ApJ/859/140 : Multi-band magnitudes for W UMa EB* candidates (Chen+, 2018)
J/ApJS/237/28 : WISE catalog of periodic variable stars (Chen+, 2018)
J/AJ/156/102 : TESS Input Catalog & Candidate Target List (Stassun+, 2018)
J/ApJS/235/38 : Kepler planets. VIII. DR25 reliability (Thompson+, 2018)
J/other/NatAs/3.320 : Galactic classical Cepheids catalog (Chen+, 2019)
J/A+A/622/A60 : Gaia DR2 misclassified RR Lyrae list (Clementini+, 2019)
J/A+A/623/A110 : Gaia DR2. Variable stars in CMD (Gaia Collaboration+, 2019)
J/ApJ/876/85 : HST observations for LMC Cepheids (Riess+, 2019)
J/other/Sci/365.478 : Milky Way classical Cepheids sample (Skowron+, 2019)
J/AJ/158/16 : Identification of RR Lyrae stars from DES (Stringer+, 2019)
J/ApJS/249/18 : The ZTF catalog of periodic variable stars (Chen+, 2020)
J/AJ/159/60 : Flares from stars in TESS sectors 1 & 2 (Gunther+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/499/5508 : Variable subdwarf B stars in TESS I (Sahoo+, 2020)
J/MNRAS/493/1388 : Asteroseismology of red giants with Kepler (Yu+, 2020)
J/ApJS/254/39 : Exoplanets from TESS first 2yr obs (Guerrero+, 2021)
J/MNRAS/513/420 : NGTS Variability Study (Briegal+, 2022)
J/ApJS/258/16 : TESS Eclipsing Binary stars. I. Sectors 1-26 (Prsa+, 2022)
J/A+A/666/A142 : Classification of A-F spectral type stars (Skarka+, 2022)
J/other/NatAs/7.1081 : Double-mode RR Lyrae stars data (Chen+, 2023)
J/ApJS/268/4 : Stellar var. with TESS 2min cadence phot. (Fetherolf+, 2023)
J/MNRAS/522/29 : 15000 ellipsoidal binary candidates in TESS (Green+, 2023)
J/A+A/674/A21 : KYSO - The Konkoly Optical YSO catalogue (Marton+, 2023)
J/AJ/165/30 : Eclipsing Binaries from LAMOST Survey. III. (Xiong+, 2023)
http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/ : NASA TESS SSC homepage
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table5.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 10 I10 --- TIC [358/2056034502] TESS Input Catalog (v8.2)
identifier
12- 20 F9.5 deg RAdeg Right Ascension (J2000)
22- 30 F9.5 deg DEdeg [-90/90] Declination (J2000)
32- 37 F6.4 --- R2 [0.019/1] Proxy for goodness of fit (a higher
R2 indicates a better fit)
39- 48 F10.6 d Per [0.012/104] Photometric period, obtained by
Lomb-Scargle method
50- 56 F7.3 mag TESSAmp [0/301.8] Normalized peak-to-peak amplitude
determined of the LCs (1)
58- 62 F5.3 --- R21 [0/3.1] 2nd to 1st amplitude ratio obtained (1)
64- 68 F5.3 --- R31 [0/4.2] 3nd to 1st amplitude ratio obtained (1)
70- 78 F9.3 --- Kurtosis [-1.73/24400] Kurtosis (2)
80- 93 I14 --- Skewness [-1520000000000/231000000000] Skewness (2)
95- 99 F5.3 --- Q31 [0/1.3] Normalized difference between 3rd
quartile (75%) and 1st quartile (25%) (2)
101- 105 F5.3 --- SWTest [0.047/1] Shapiro-Wilk normality test
statistic
107- 111 F5.3 --- KVar [0.1/1] Stetson K index, calculated using LCs
113- 117 F5.3 --- Std [0/1.6] Normalized weighted standard
deviation of the LCs
119- 124 F6.4 mas e_plx [0.008/1.6] Gaia DR3 parallax uncertainty
126- 133 F8.4 mas plx [0.01/374] Gaia DR3 photometric parallax
135- 141 F7.4 mag BP-RP0 [-0.63/6] Dereddened Gaia BP-RP color
143- 150 F8.4 mag WGMag [-10.4/15.1] G-band (330nm to 1050nm)
absolute Weisenheit magnitudes, based on
Gaia DR3
152- 156 F5.3 rad phi21 [3.14/9.43] Phase difference between 2nd to
1st phase obtained (1)
158- 162 F5.3 rad phi31 [0/6.3] Phase difference between 3nd to 1st
phase obtained (1)
164- 169 F6.3 mag W1-W3 [-3.7/11.7] W1-W3 color determined based on
WISE
171- 176 F6.3 mag W1-W4 [-2.02/12] W1-W4 color determined based on WISE
178- 185 F8.4 mag WW1Mag [-17.76/12.82] Absolute W1-band Weisenheit
magnitude
187- 190 F4.2 --- CCProb [0.15/1] Correct Classification Probability
192- 199 A8 --- Type Type of variable star (3)
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Note (1): Values obtained from the eighth-order Fourier fitting.
Note (2): Defined in Kim+ (2014, J/A+A/566/A43)
Note (3): Type of variable star as follows:
Cepheids = classical Cepheids and Type-II Cepheids (184 occurrences)
DSCT = delta Scuti variable stars (4887 occurrences)
EA = detached eclipsing binaries (3938 occurrences)
EB = semi-detached eclipsing binaries (404 occurrences)
EW = contact eclipsing binaries (1301 occurrences)
GCAS = gamma Cassiopeiae variable stars (23641 occurrences)
HADS = high amplitude delta Scuti variable stars (184 occurrences)
ROT = Rotational variable stars (36740 occurrences)
RRab = fundamental-mode RR Lyrae variable stars (333 occurrences)
RRcd = first-overtone and double-mode RR Lyrae variable stars
(139 occurrences)
UV = eruptive variable stars of the UV Ceti type (477 occurrences)
YSO = Young stellar object (277 occurrences)
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
Licences: cc-by
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 30-Oct-2025