Light Curves, Time-Domain Astronomy & Transients: Foundations

Time-domain astronomy studies how brightness, spectrum, or position changes with time.

Different physical processes create characteristic time signatures: orbital geometry produces eclipses, stellar oscillations create pulsations, explosions produce rise-and-decay curves, and rotating spots modulate brightness.

TESS continuously monitors changing sources in broad sky sectors, while Rubin's LSST repeatedly surveys the southern sky to detect and classify enormous numbers of changing or moving objects.