galaxies

Article
Mass Ratio and Spot Parameter Estimation from Eclipsing
Binary Star Light Curves
Dirk Terrell

Deptartment of Space Studies, Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, CO 80302, USA; terrell@boulder.swri.edu

Abstract: Eclipsing binary stars have a rich history of contributing to the field of stellar astrophysics.
Most of the available information on the fundamental properties of stars has come from the analysis
of observations of binaries. The availability of powerful computers and sophisticated codes that apply
physical models has resulted in determinations of masses and radii of sufficient accuracy to provide
critical tests of theories of stellar structure and evolution. Despite their sophistication, these codes still
require the guiding hand of trained scientists to extract reliable information. The computer code will
produce results, but it is still imperative for the analyst to ensure that those results make astrophysical
sense, and to ascertain their reliability. Care must be taken to ensure that we are asking the codes for
parameters for which there is information in the data. The analysis of synthetic observations with
simulated observational errors of typical size can provide valuable insight to the analysis process
because the parameters used to generate the observations are known. Such observations are herein
analyzed to guide the process of determining mass ratios and spot parameters from eclipsing binary
light curves. The goal of this paper is to illustrate some of the subtleties that need to be recognized
and treated properly when analyzing binary star data.

Keywords: eclipsing binaries; light curves; photometric mass ratios; spots






Citation: Terrell, D. Mass Ratio and
Spot Parameter Estimation from
Eclipsing Binary Star Light Curves. 1. Introduction
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8. https://doi.org/ Binary (and higher multiple) systems play an important role in our understanding of
10.3390/galaxies10010008
the nature of astronomical objects. From solar system objects to clusters of galaxies, binary
Academic Editors: Dimitris M. and multiple systems are ubiquitous and serve as astrophysical laboratories for measuring
Christodoulou, Robert E. Wilson and the fundamental properties of their constituent objects, such as mass and size. A smaller
Walter Van Hamme number of such objects have mutual orbits that cause them to pass in front of one another
as seen from Earth, leading to “mutual events” in planetary science terminology (e.g., the
Received: 1 December 2021
Pluto-Charon system), “transits” in the case of an exoplanet and its host star, or “eclipses”
Accepted: 30 December 2021
in the case of two stars. Of these, eclipsing binary stars have the most extensive history
Published: 5 January 2022
of providing fundamental information from their light curves, going back to the early
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral 20th century.
with regard to jurisdictional claims in In many ways, the analysis of observations of binary stars is a mature field, with so-
published maps and institutional affil- phisticated models available for use by anyone with even the most modest computational
iations.
resources. We live in a time where the pace of observational technology has greatly in-
creased both the number of known eclipsing binaries and the volume of data on them. Our
analysis methods have evolved to deal with this explosion of data. There is a temptation,
however, to process large volumes of data and put too much trust in the results without
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
giving due thought to what they mean. Artificial intelligence promises to improve such
This article is an open access article
analyses, but getting there still requires skilled scientists to extract knowledge reliably.
distributed under the terms and There are many subtleties to treat correctly when it comes to binary star data analysis,
conditions of the Creative Commons and this paper is an attempt to illustrate some of them.
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// In its most basic form, science is a fairly simple process of using models to explain
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ observations. Binary star data analysis fits that description. There are numerous models
4.0/). that have been developed (e.g., stars as spheres, ellipsoids, or equipotential surfaces)

Galaxies 2022, 10, 8. https://doi.org/10.3390/galaxies10010008 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/galaxies

Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 2 of 9

and various implementations of those models, these days as computer programs (e.g.,
WINK [1], EBOP [2], WD [3]). One must obviously choose a model that is capable of
accurately representing the binary system to be analyzed. Using a model based on spherical
stars to analyze an overcontact binary is doomed to failure, for example. The use of
a sophisticated model does not necessarily mean that a better result will be achieved.
The most sophisticated binary star model using equipotential surfaces for the two stars,
detailed treatment of the reflection effect, accurate stellar atmospheres, etc. will give useless
results when applied to light curve observations of β Lyrae because the system contains
an accretion disk which the model cannot treat. To achieve results that we can have some
confidence in, we must understand what we can expect to estimate from the application of
a model and what we cannot accurately estimate, no matter how fancy our analysis tools
are. Wilson [4] provides an introduction to the analysis of binary star light curves.
In the most favorable situation for analyzing eclipsing binaries, both light and radial
velocity curves from spectroscopy will be available. With an astrophysically appropriate
model there are many things we can reliably estimate about binary stars from these data.
Parameters like masses, radii, shapes, rotation rates, and luminosities are commonly found
in papers on binary stars. However, frequently there is carelessness that leads to over-
confidence in results when models are pushed too far. Often this situation results when
analyses of eclipsing binaries are based solely on light curves and parameters that have
little to no influence on the light curves are estimated. Light curves are relatively easy
to obtain with modern robotic telescopes and cameras. Obtaining good radial velocity
curves requires much more advanced instrumentation, and that fact explains why radial
velocity observations for eclipsing binaries are significantly less numerous. While there are
many systems that do have radial velocity data available, most known eclipsing binaries
have no useful radial velocity data. There is a temptation to publish light curve analyses
and to make assumptions to derive absolute parameters, with subsequently overconfi-
dent musings on things like the evolutionary history of the system. A particularly bad
example is the analysis of the light curve of an overcontact binary with partial eclipses.
These binaries have short orbital periods and it is thus easy to churn out papers on them,
but for the most part, they contribute very little to our understanding of stars. In contrast,
analyses involving multiple types of observables, such as, most commonly, light and ra-
dial velocity curves (e.g., Sekaran, et al. [5]) or in more exotic situations, light curves,
radial velocity curves and X-ray pulse arrival times (e.g., Wilson & Terrell [6]), often
produce a deeper understanding of the system. A good example of how more complete
observations can give a clear picture of a previously confusing system is TT Herculis.
As Terrell & Nelson [7] explain, new radial velocity data of the secondary star showed
that the system has a double contact morphology that illustrates why previous analyses
were so disparate. Before the Terrell & Nelson [7] spectroscopy, only radial velocities of the
primary were available and given that the system has partial eclipses, the photometric mass
ratio was unreliable (see Section 2). Once the mass ratio was reliably determined, a clear
picture of the system’s morphology appeared. So, while multiple type of observables often
give us a more complete picture of an individual binary, we most often find ourselves in
the situation of having only photometric data and wish to ascertain as much information
as we can from those data, but we must be careful not to draw conclusions that the data
cannot support.
This paper discusses what can be deduced about mass ratios and spot parameters
when only light curves are available for an eclipsing binary. Photometric mass ratios have
been discussed and estimated for various types of eclipsing binaries for decades now,
but there seems to be lingering confusion about why and when they can be accurately
estimated. Spot parameters, namely their locations on the surface of a star, their size and
their temperature, have a long history of application in light curve analyses but have
received relatively little attention in terms of how accurately they can be determined.
Anyone who has attempted to model light curve asymmetries with spots has discovered
the inherent difficulties in the process.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 3 of 9

2. Photometric Mass Ratios

The ideas underlying photometric mass ratios go back many decades to early attempts
to model eclipsing binary light curves. The genesis of the idea that the lobe-filling condition
can be used to estimate a photometric mass ratio appears in Wood [8] where he argues that
it provides a limit on the mass ratio for R Canis Majoris, a system now known [9,10] to be
semidetached. Wilson [11] gives a brief discussion of the early work that led to the use of
photometric mass ratios, and explains why they can be very accurate in certain situations,
namely semidetached and overcontact binaries that exhibit complete (i.e., total/annular)
eclipses. The chain of logic behind photometric mass ratios is fairly simple, but many
manuscripts are still submitted wherein it is clear that it is not understood.
Terrell & Wilson [12] gave a slightly more detailed explanation of the logic, and at-
tempted to clarify the situation by analyzing synthetic observations of semidetached and
overcontact binaries. Their Figure 1 for overcontact binaries and Figure 2 for semidetached
binaries show why accurate mass ratios can, in principle, be determined. For overcontact
binaries, the important quantity estimated from the light curve is the ratio of the radii of
the two stars. For semidetached binaries, it is the radius of the lobe-filling star. However,
accurate mass ratios require more than the lobe-filling constraints. Terrell & Wilson [12]
showed that the nature of the eclipses (namely, complete versus partial) was crucial to
accurately determining the mass ratio. The accuracy of the mass ratio estimate degrades
very rapidly when the eclipses go from complete to partial, as shown in their Figure 4
for observational scatter of the typical 1% precision. The same held true for even higher
precision observations easily achieved by space-based observatories like TESS (see their
Figure 5). More precise observations do not change the situation. Accurate photometric
mass ratio determinations require overcontact or semidetached configurations and com-
plete eclipses. The bottom line is that there simply is not enough information in the light
curves of systems with partial eclipses to accurately determine the mass ratio.
In papers on semidetached or overcontact systems with partial eclipses where there
are no radial velocity data, a frequent approach is to perform light curve solutions at a
discrete set of fixed values for the mass ratio q and find the value that gives the best fit to the
light curve, the so-called q-search method. The usefulness of this approach is questionable
because of the arguments given above. Because the information on the mass ratio in a light
curve is limited, any method of analysis is going to be limited in its ability to extract an
accurate mass ratio. The analysis may provide some broad estimate, but it will be limited.
To explore these limitations, we analyzed synthetic observations with random errors of
1% for an overcontact binary with q = 0.3 and a modified surface potential [13] Ω1 = 2.37.
The Wilson–Devinney (WD) program was used to generate these observations, following
the same approach of Terrell & Wilson [12]. Four values of the inclination i were used to
illustrate a nearly central eclipse (i = 88◦ ), a just barely complete eclipse (i = 80◦ ), a just
barely partial eclipse (i = 79◦ ) and a noticeably partial eclipse (i = 75◦ ). The differential
corrections (DC) program was then used to solve the light curves at fixed values of q from
0.1 to 0.6 in 0.01 steps. DC was run until the corrections were ten times smaller than the
errors, or the solution diverged.
Figure 1 shows results that support the idea that the eclipse circumstances determine
how strongly the mass ratio affects the light curve. The top panels show that there is very
little variation in the mean residual of the solutions for a broad range of mass ratios when
the eclipses are partial. The bottom panels show that the fits are noticeably improved when
the eclipses are complete. At i = 80◦ (left panel), the eclipses are just barely total but there
is a reasonably well-defined minimum in the mean residual at the correct value of q. When
the eclipses are nearly central (right panel), there is a very pronounced minimum.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 4 of 9

Figure 1. The q-search results for an overcontact binary with q = 0.3. The top panels are for inclination
values that result in partial eclipses and the bottom panels are for inclinations that produce complete
eclipses. The ordinate values are the mean residual from the fit to the synthetic light curve data and
are in units of normalized flux where the flux at phase 0.25 is around 1.4.

As Wilson [14] points out, for an overcontact system with complete eclipses, the am-
plitude of variation of the light curve is very sensitive to the mass ratio. For equal masses
the fractional areas eclipsed are large, leading to deep eclipses. When the masses are very
different, the fractional areas eclipsed are small, leading to shallow eclipses.
The observational evidence is clear that most (and perhaps all) overcontact binaries are
actually hierarchical triple systems [15]. Since third light affects light curves by reducing
the amplitude of variation, the determination of an accurate mass ratio is dependent upon
an accurate determination of any third light in the light curve. To illustrate the effect of
third light on the determination of the mass ratio, q-search runs were done for a binary with
the same parameters as described above but with varying amounts of third light added to
the observations. The inclination was set to 88◦ , so that q would be strongly determined,
but third light was set to zero and not adjusted. Since third light reduces the light curve
amplitude, we would expect the estimated mass ratio to be smaller than the actual value
since DC was not allowed to adjust the amount of third light. Figure 2 shows that is exactly
what happens. The run illustrated in leftmost panel has a small amount of third light added
and it has very little effect on the mass ratio that is determined. The run in the middle
panel has a moderate amount of third light and the estimated mass ratio is 0.27, about
10% smaller than the correct value. The run in the rightmost panel has a large amount of
third light and the mass ratio is only very weakly determined at q = 0.14, far from the
correct value.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 5 of 9

Figure 2. The q-search simulations for the same binary used in Figure 1 with i = 88◦ and various
values of third light. The third light unit is the ratio of the third light to the total system light at phase
0.25. Ordinate units are the same as Figure 1.

Another set of q-search runs was done to see if DC would be able to estimate an
accurate mass ratio if it was allowed to adjust third light. As above, the inclination was
set to 88◦ to get nearly central eclipses and the third light amount was set to the moderate
value used above of about 7% of the total system light at phase 0.25 for generating the
observations. DC was then run with a starting value of no third light which was then
allowed to adjust. Figure 3 shows the results. From higher trial mass ratios, the fit quickly
improves as the mass ratio is reduced. At the correct q value of 0.3, the mean residual curve
is fairly flat until increasing again at q = 0.23. The reason for this flat region is the correlation
between the mass ratio and third light. At q = 0.3, DC correctly recovers the amount of
third light that was added to the observations. As the mass ratio decreases the recovered
amount of third light also decreases until it becomes so small as to be immeasurable, even
trending to unphysical negative values. Note that this is consistent with the mass ratio
value recovered when third light is set to zero and not adjusted.

Figure 3. The q-search simulations for the same binary used in Figure 1 with i = 88◦ and third light
set to about 7% of the total system light at phase 0.25. Ordinate units are the same as Figure 1.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 6 of 9

These results suggest caution when determining photometric mass ratios where there
is an unknown amount of third light, even in the best case scenario of having nearly central
eclipses. If the steep slope of the curve to the right of the true value of the mass ratio
in Figure 3 holds for other cases, it may prove to be a saving grace. Does the transition
from high slope to the flat part of the curve always occur at the correct pair of q/l3 values?
Future work will have to be done to assess that possibility.

3. Spot Parameters
Asymmetries are frequently see in eclipsing binary light curves. Often these are
thought to be caused by spots on the stellar surfaces and have been modeled as such for
some time now [16]. Spots can be hotter or cooler than the surrounding photosphere,
with V361 Lyr [17] being a spectacular example of the former. W UMa stars frequently
show time-variable asymmetries that are usually modeled as cool spots that move across
the surface with time, although some systems like CE Leonis [18] have been modeled
with hot spots. Experience with spot solutions has shown that correlations among the
parameters can be severe, making the estimation of spot parameters from light curves a
task that requires much caution. When doing light curve analysis, one must always be
cautious of local minimum issues, and especially so when spots are involved.
The big question for spot solutions concerns the uniqueness of the solution. Each spot
requires four additional parameters: two for the position on the stellar surface, one for the
spot size, and one for the spot temperature. Of course, one could use many spots to achieve
a near-perfect fit to the light curves but that would result in a meaningless solution in terms
of uniqueness. Normally, one or two spots are used to model the major asymmetries in the
light curve(s) to avoid this uniqueness problem, at the risk, perhaps, of ending up with a
model that might lead to incorrect conclusions. In the absence of other types of data, such
as line profiles (see Vogt & Penrod [19]), one must be very careful to assess the uniqueness
problem when modeling light curve asymmetries of light curves and draw any conclusions
with appropriate uncertainty. It is insufficient to guess some initial parameters and hope
that a local minimizer, like the differential corrections algorithm employed in WD, will give
the best set of parameters. Only solutions that explore a broad region of parameter space
can give reasonable confidence that a global minimum of the residuals has been found, or if
solutions with very different parameters can produce statistically identical light curves.
Ideally one would like to explore all parts of parameter space, guided by astrophysical
intuition of course, but that is computationally intractable. There are many optimiza-
tion algorithms that have been employed in light curve codes to search broad regions
of parameter space (e.g., SIMPLEX [20] and simulated annealing [21]), but one that has
heretofore seen little application in the light curve analysis field, probably because of the
computational cost, is genetic algorithms. Metcalfe [22] used a genetic algorithm optimizer
to analyze light curves of the W UMa star BH Cas, and Terrell & Nelson [23] applied a
genetic algorithm optimizer to determine spot parameters for GSC 3870-01172. Recent
work (e.g., Cunningham, et al. [24] and Csizmadia, S. [25]) indicates that interest in genetic
algorithms may be increasing.
To explore light curve solutions for spotted stars, the Wilson–Devinney (WD)
program [3,13,26] was interfaced with the Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms in Python
(DEAP) package [27]. DEAP is a very flexible package that has several built-in evolutionary
algorithms but also allows the user to develop and use others. Genetic algorithms mimic
the evolutionary process where “genes” are a representation of the parameters of the model
being fit and individuals in a population are defined by their “genes”. As in biological evo-
lution, processes such as crossover and mutation alter the population’s gene pool. For each
generation of the population, the mutation and crossover processes are simulated and then
a fitness for each individual is computed. The best individuals are then selected to produce
the next generation.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 7 of 9

In this work, the eaSimple algorithm in DEAP was used to explore the parameter space
for an overcontact binary with q = 0.2 and complete eclipses. A dark spot with a radius of
0.3 radians and a temperature factor of 0.9 was placed on the primary star at a co-latitude of
1.5 radians and a longitude of 1.9 radians. WD was used to generate synthetic observations,
as described above, with a scatter of 0.01 mag. The crossover probability was set to 0.65
and the mutation probability was set to 0.03 to ensure that a broad volume of parameter
space would be sampled. The population size was set to 10,000 individuals and at least
70 generations were computed. DEAP keeps a record of the best individuals discovered
through all generations, the so-called “hall of fame”, and the best individual from this
list is used to get the best-fit parameters for the simulation. Each simulation entailed the
computation of about 500,000 to 1,000,000 light curves, and dozens of simulations were run
for each scenario. Clearly this level of computation requires significant hardware, but such
hardware is now available at reasonable expense. These simulations were performed on a
computer with 64 CPU cores that cost about $10,000 US.
Bounds for each of the adjusted parameters are specified to control the volume of
parameter space to search. The spot parameter bounds were set to allow for any location
on the star’s surface, spot temperature factor from 0.8 to 1.0 and spot radius from 0.1
to 1.0 radians. Other parameters were set to wide but reasonable values to ensure good
coverage of parameter space. For example the inclination was sampled between 65◦ and
89.9◦ . In these simulations, the mass ratio was fixed at the true value.
Three scenarios were explored in this work: a single light light curve matching the
TESS passband, and two scenarios with two light curves each, one with BV light curves and
one with BIC light curves. The goal was to see how well spot parameters could be recovered
from a single light curve, as well as from a simultaneous analysis of two light curves. For the
two-curve scenario, BV and BIC were chosen to see how the filter choice might affect the
reliability of the derived parameters, since spot phenomena are temperature-dependent.
Figure 4 shows the estimates of spot parameters for the simulations of each scenario.
The left panel shows the spot location parameters and the right panel shows the intrinsic
spot parameters. Black circles indicate the parameters for the single light curve simulations,
red squares denote the BV simulations and the green triangles denote the BIC simulations.
The plus signs are located at the correct values for the parameters.
The plot of spot location parameters shows that the spot longitude is much more
accurately determined than the spot latitude (note the very different scales on the axes for
those quantities), but that is hardly surprising given that the eclipsing star moves across
the spot mainly in longitude. The plot of spot temperature versus spot radius shows
the strong correlation between those two quantities, especially for the single light curve
solutions. The single light curve solutions clearly do a poor job of recovering the true spot
parameters. The BV solutions show signs of improving the parameter estimation, but the
BIC solutions, with their wider wavelength coverage, obviously provide better leverage
to break the radius-temperature correlation. This is also unsurprising. The additional
temperature information allows the optimizer to give better estimates of the intrinsic spot
parameters. The spot latitude still remains uncertain but there is no doubt that multiple
light curves with wide wavelength coverage are required when using spots to model light
curve asymmetries.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 8 of 9

Figure 4. The spot parameters for the best individuals in each simulation The single light curve
solutions are represented by black circles. The two light curve solutions for BV are represented by
red squares and the BIC solutions are represented by green triangles. The plus signs indicate the
true values.

4. Summary
Solving synthetic light curves of eclipsing binaries produced by an appropriate physi-
cal model can provide insight that improves the modeling of observations of real binaries.
When measuring photometric mass ratios, accuracy demands that the eclipses be complete.
Light curves of systems with partial eclipses simply do not have the necessary information
to measure an accurate mass ratio. Attempts to do so by the q-search method, or any
method, are futile. Such approaches may provide some information on the mass ratio,
but the derived values should be used with appropriate caution. Third light, if not properly
modeled, will lead to mass ratios that are too low, a problem that cannot be ignored given
that many, if not most, close binaries (p < 3.0 days) appear to be triple systems [15,28,29].
Genetic algorithm optimizers show promise for determining spot parameters from light
curves in certain situations, namely the simultaneous solution of light curves with broad
wavelength coverage. Broader wavelength coverage allows the optimizer to reduce the
correlation between the size and temperature of a spot. Spot latitudes only weakly affect
light curves while the spot longitude can be accurately measured. However, one should
remain cautious about uniqueness problems where spot solutions are concerned.

Funding: This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The author declares no conflict of interest.
Galaxies 2022, 10, 8 9 of 9

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