Eclipse mapping of late-type close binary stars

Abstract

The presence of abnormally bright or dark regions on the inner face of either component of an eclipsing binary produces observable distortion of the eclipse profile in a broad-band light curve. The changes in the light level as the eclipsing component scans across the inner face of its companion can be used to reconstruct the surface brightness distribution in the eclipsed region. The purpose of this paper is to describe a code that uses the maximum entropy method (MEM) for eclipse mapping. Light curves synthesized with the code are found to give close agreement with results obtained using Hill's LIGHT2 light-curve synthesis code. Reconstructions using simulated data sets derived from known starting images are used to assess the performance of the code and the sensitivity of the reconstructed images to small systematic errors in the eclipse geometry. © 1997 RAS.