How many eclipsing binaries in an open cluster?
15 Nov 2015This is a simple question I’ve been interested in for a long time: Given excellent statistics about the stars we see in an open cluster, how many eclipsing binaries should we observe in a given dataset (e.g. Kepler)?
Given excellent observations of a cluster, we can constrain the properties of binaries. The parameters to fit would be the total binary fraction and the mass ratio distribution (maybe could be described using a slope or something).
An older cluster’s dynamical/tidal history through the Galaxy should affect it’s binary population. This might be an interesting way to constrain that history versus field stars. Or versus young clusters.
Other Cluster / EB ideas: It would be nice to have a definitive “Catalog of Variable Stars in M67” based on every available time domain dataset.
- K2
- 2MASS Cal-PSWDB
- LINEAR
- Catalina
- several one-off datasets
Seems like a great hack-day idea too, doing really crappy forward or Monte Carlo model of what you should see, taking in best guesses for everything