Under-Developed and Under-Utilized Eclipsing Binary Model Capabilities

• Main Author: R. E. Wilson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Korean Space Science Society (KSSS) 2012-02-01
• Series: Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
• Subjects: binaries; starspots; line profiles; ephemerides; circumstellar attenuation; polarization
• Online Access: http://ocean.kisti.re.kr/downfile/volume/kosss/OJOOBS/2012/v29n2/OJOOBS_2012_v29n2_115.pdf
• ISSN: 2093-5587; 2093-1409

Existing but largely unused binary star model capabilities are examined. An easily implemented scheme is parameterization of starspot growth and decay that can stimulate work on outer convection zones and their dynamos. Improved precision in spot computation now enhances analysis of very precise data. An existing computational model for blended spectral line profiles is accurate for binary system effects but needs to include damping, thermal Doppler, and other intrinsic broadening effects. Binary star ephemerides had been found exclusively from eclipse timings until recently, but now come also from whole light and radial velocity curves. A logical further development will be to expand these whole curve solutions to include eclipse timings. An attenuation model for circumstellar clouds, with several absorption and scattering mechanisms, has been applied only once, perhaps because the model clouds have fixed locations. However the clouds could be made to move dynamically and be combined into moving streams and disks. An area of potential interest is polarization curve analysis, where incentive for modeling could follow from publication of observed polarization curves. Other recent advances include direct single step solutions for temperatures of both stars of an eclipsing binary and third body kinematics from combined light and velocity curves.