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LOCATING EXOPLANETS USING LIGHTKURVE**

Abstract

Lightkurve software facilitates the analysis of time-series data of planets, stars, and galaxies collected by the Kepler and TESS space telescopes. Through the use of this software, as well as Python code, we can identify potential planetary transits from periodic dips in the brightness of stars. These periodic dips can be further refined and analyzed to determine other characteristics of the system such as the time of transit and approximate size of the planet. Data is gathered from the TESS space telescope using the MAST archive, and our research focuses on data from stars within about 20 lightyears from Earth. A variety of refinement techniques in Python are used to interpret and analyze this raw data. The lightkurve software and research like this expands our understanding of distant solar systems and provides an intuitive and user-friendly method of locating unidentified exoplanets. The specific star that I am analyzing is called TIC 283722336 and has about 0.8 times the mass of the Sun, located about 6.5 parsecs from Earth.

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