Mine NASA TESS data for an exoplanet signal
An amateur used Claude Code to analyze NASA TESS light curves and flag a candidate signal around TIC 4206066 that later got follow-up observing time.
- Agent or tool
- Claude Code
- Topic
- Research & Data
- Reported on
- Hacker News
- Added
- 2026-10-15
Why it matters
Research is mostly gathering, cleaning and comparing. Handing that groundwork to an agent leaves the person with the part that needs judgment: deciding what the findings mean. It is one of 67 sightings filed under Research & Data on Agent Sightings (number 40 by interest), and one of 164 involving Claude Code.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into Claude Code or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
Download the TESS light curve for TIC <id>, search for periodic transit-like dips, plot phase-folded curves for the strongest periods, and write a short methods note with caveats.
Tip: Start small: run it once on a low-stakes example, read what the agent did, and only then let it run on real work.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002665. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.