Lomb-Scargle Periodogram

The Lomb-Scargle periodogram is the standard tool for finding periods in unevenly sampled astronomical time series data. It's particularly useful for detecting periodic signals in light curves from space missions like Kepler, K2, and TESS.

Overview

The Lomb-Scargle periodogram extends the classical periodogram to handle unevenly sampled data, which is common in astronomy due to observing constraints, data gaps, and variable cadences.

Basic Usage with Lightkurve

import lightkurve as lk
import numpy as np

# Create a light curve object
lc = lk.LightCurve(time=time, flux=flux, flux_err=error)

# Create periodogram (specify maximum period to search)
pg = lc.to_periodogram(maximum_period=15)  # Search up to 15 days