This tutorial contains step-by-step instructions for plotting a TESS light curve directly from the Internet. We will recover the first exoplanet that was discovered by TESS, transiting the naked-eye star Pi Mensae. Its detection was announced in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol 619 (Nov 2018) by D. Gandolfi et. al. It has an orbital period of 6.26834 +/- 0.00024 d, and a transit duration of  0.1237 d. We will recover both values in the TESS light curve.


Peranso uses data collected with the TESS mission, obtained from the MAST data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Funding for the TESS mission is provided by the NASA Explorer Program. STScI is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5–26555. Peranso furthermore makes use of TESSCut, for creating cutouts of TESS images (see Brasseur et al. 2019).