Simulation of eclipsing binary stars
Introduction
According to estimation more than half of all stars that are observable have neighbouring stars located relatively closeby, and hence are gravitationally bound. The majority of these stars form binary star systems: two stars orbiting around a unique point, their common center of mass:
When observed from earth, the stars of a binary star system could eclipse eachother, causing the amount of light that is observed to vary periodically. The light-curve of an eclipsing binary, i.e. the observed brightness as a function of time, shows a shallow minimum when the dimmer component is eclipsed and shows a deeper minimum when the brighter component is eclipsed:
Binary star systems are an important source of astrophysical information because the analysis of light curves can provide information on stellar characteristics such as their radii, density, and temperature, and orbital characteristics such as planar tilt and eccentricity.
Simulation software
Eclipsing Binary Simulator (EBS) is an astronomy application and simulation tool that allows to visualise the orbit and synthetic light curve of binary star systems. Several parameters of binary star systems can be set to study how the systems behave assuming certain system characteristics.
For more information (features, download, background), see:
EBS: http://cosmion.net/software/ebs/