Treasure Hunting in Photometric Seas:  A Search for Eclipsing Binary Stars


Eclipsing binary star systems provide the most accurate method of measuring both the
masses and radii of stars, and enable us to constrain models of stellar structure
and dynamics. We have taken advantage of the recent availability of large-scale
multi-epoch photometric datasets, and analyzed 185,445 light curves from ten TrES
fields and 218,699 light curves from the OGLE II bulge fields. In order to manage
such large quantities of data, we developed a pipeline with which we systematically
identified eclipsing binaries, found their components' absolute properties, and
located rare cases for further follow-up. Of particular importance are low-mass
eclipsing binaries, which are rare, yet critical for resolving the ongoing
mass-radius discrepancy between theoretical models and observations. To this
end, we have discovered over a dozen new low-mass eclipsing binary candidates,
and spectroscopically confirmed the masses of five of them. Such assembly line
astronomical analyses, which include both fitting data to models and identifying
abnormal cases, are expected to become increasingly necessary with the next
generation of ultra-large photometric surveys, such as Pan-STARRS and LSST.