TDLight: A Framework for Incremental Light Curve Management and Smart Classification

TL;DR

TDLight is a scalable, real-time system that manages and classifies astronomical light curves incrementally, enabling timely analysis and discovery in large-scale time-domain surveys.

Contribution

It introduces a unified framework combining high-performance incremental storage with real-time classification tailored for astronomical light curves.

Findings

Achieves high-throughput data ingestion up to 954,000 rows/sec

Supports efficient cone-search queries with HEALPix indexing

Enables early classification and identification of high-value transient candidates

Abstract

With the exponential growth of time-domain surveys, the volume of light curves has increased rapidly. However, many survey projects, such as Gaia, still rely on offline batch-processing workflows in which data are calibrated, merged, and released only after an observing phase is completed. This latency delays scientific analysis and causes many high-value transient events to be buried in archival data, missing the window for timely follow-up. While existing alert brokers handle heterogeneous data streams, it remains difficult to deploy a unified framework that combines high-performance incremental storage with real-time classification on local infrastructure. To address this challenge, we propose TDLight, a scalable system that adapts the time-series database TDengine (a high-performance IoT database) for astronomical data using a one-table-per-source schema. This architecture supports high-throughput ingestion, achieving 954,000 rows s^-1 for archived data and 541,000 rows s^-1 for incremental streams, while Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization (HEALPix) indexing enables efficient cone-search queries. Building on this storage layer, we integrate the pre-trained hierarchical Random Forest classifier from the LEAVES framework to construct an incremental classification pipeline. Using the LEAVES dataset, we simulate data accumulation and evaluate a trigger-based strategy that performs early classification at specific observational milestones. In addition, by monitoring the evolution of classification probabilities, the system identifies "high-value candidates" -- sources that show high early confidence but later undergo significant label shifts. TDLight is released as an open-source Dockerized environment, providing a deployable infrastructure for next-generation time-domain surveys.