We report the discovery with TESS of a remarkable quadruple star system with a 2+1+1 configuration. The two unique characteristics of this system are that (i) the inner eclipsing binary (stars Aa and Ab) eclipses the star in the outermost orbit (star C), and (ii) these outer 4th body eclipses last for ∼12 days, the longest of any such system known. The three orbital periods are ∼3.3 days, ∼51 days, and ∼2100 days. The extremely long duration of the outer eclipses is due to the fact that star B slows binary A down on the sky relative to star C. We combine TESS photometric data, ground-based photometric observations, eclipse timing points, radial velocity measurements, the composite spectral energy distribution, and stellar isochones in a spectro-photodynamical analysis to deduce all of the basic properties of the four stars (mass, radius, Teff, and age), as well as the orbital parameters for all three orbits. The four masses are MAa=0.382M⊙, MAb=0.300M⊙, MB=0.540M⊙ and MC=0.615M⊙, with a typical uncertainty of 0.015 M⊙.
@article{arxiv.2208.05789,
title = {TIC 114936199: A Quadruple Star System with a 12-day Outer Orbit Eclipse},
author = {Brian P. Powell and Saul A. Rappaport and Tamás Borkovits and Veselin B. Kostov and Guillermo Torres and Rahul Jayaraman and David W. Latham and Hana Kučáková and Zoltán Garai and Theodor Pribulla and Andrew Vanderburg and Ethan Kruse and Thomas Barclay and Greg Olmschenk and Martti H. K. Kristiansen and Robert Gagliano and Thomas L. Jacobs and Daryll M. LaCourse and Mark Omohundro and Hans M. Schwengeler and Ivan A. Terentev and Allan R. Schmitt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.05789},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication by The Astrophysical Journal, 10 August 2022