A Library of Light Curves with TESS and K2

Since May 2025, I’ve worked with the Brown Dwarfs in New York City (BDNYC) collaboration on an applied astronomy research project investigating complex rotator M-dwarf stars using time-series photometric data from the TESS and K2 space telescope missions. The project focuses on how phase-folded light curve morphology evolves over multi-year timescales and what physical mechanisms may drive these changes.

I took primary ownership of data acquisition and validation, compiling and standardizing a comprehensive dataset of all known complex rotators identified in the literature and collecting corresponding light curves across multiple surveys. To support systematic analysis at scale, I designed custom Python-based visualization tools—including multi-panel plotting utilities—to enable consistent manual inspection and comparison of hundreds of light curves across epochs. At the end of Summer 2025, I presented on the project progress with a 10 minute talk at the American Museum of Natural History’s (AMNH) Undergraduate Summer Research Symposium.

Since then, I’ve manually reviewed the full dataset to catalog morphological features, produced summary statistics and exploratory visualizations to surface notable trends and edge cases, and contributed analysis code, figures, and methodology text to an in-progress peer-reviewed manuscript. Throughout the project, I collaborated closely with a postdoctoral researcher at AMNH, taking responsibility for execution-level technical decisions while contributing to interpretation and scientific direction.

This work is supported by a selective, NSF-backed AstroCom NYC undergraduate research fellowship. All my code for the project can be found in this GitHub repository.