KIC 6850665 - Possible New Class of Tidally Distorted Eclipsing Binary Stars

     KIC 6850665 at Quarter 14 - NEA


Planet Hunters forum Talk member Planetsam flagged this unusual light curve drop in Q3. It may be a new class of  tidally distorted eclipsing binary type K stars.

Kian Jek:

Nice deductive work guys, it's very likely that this is also some sort of eccentricity induced tidal distortion superimposed with an eclipse, and I agree that KID 10614012 is probably similar. This is very interesting because it means we may have at least 3 Type K stars exhibiting this effect. I've cleaned up and detrended the light curve, preserving the eccentric pulse:

           And a close-up of the 2 transits stacked with each other:

Those little discontinuities are present at the ingress and egress, similar to KIC 10614012.

 zoo3hans:

There's no doubt about the period now, about 214.75 days.

   nighthawk_black:

 Strange--is this just some variation from one of the components that is not being 'overwritten' during the close passage--or something else?

These features can be seen in the sap_raw as well.



As Planetsam has pointed out in APH52025928, there is an interesting reminiscence to SPH10004034 on this target.

UKIRT

You can follow this star at Planet Hunters forum Talk here.