Problem description

Currently, when an user selects custom pixels via tpf.interact(), the user cannot use the selected pixels (as an aperture mask) in subsequent work outside of interact()

The user can only indirectly access it by exporting the lightcurve and read it back.

Proposal: make tpf.interact() to optionally return the the selected pixels as an aperture mask, if users specify a new return_selection_mask parameter.

Example

# return_selection_mask is the new parameter
interact_mask = tpf.interact(return_selection_mask=True);

Here an user selects custom pixels to highlight a background spike due to SSO.

Users can then access the mask in subsequent cells in the notebook, creating a lightcurve, highlight the pixels in plot(), interact_sky(), plot_pixels(), etc.

# make a copy of the selection to avoid accidental pixel selection changes in the interact.
sso_mask = interact_mask.copy()
...

lc_sso = tpf.to_lightcurve(aperture_mask=sso_mask)
lc_sso.scatter();

tpf.plot_pixels(aperture_mask=sso_mask)

The returned result is a dict that contains the selected pixels mask in the key selection_mask .
It is a dict so as to accommodate possible future additions, e.g., returning x / y limits, etc. (Update: return the mask array directly upon feedback.)

Environment

• lightkurve version (e.g. 1.0b6): v2.4.2