This is a simple question I’ve been interested in for a long time: Given excellent statistics about the stars we see in an open cluster, how many eclipsing binaries should we observe in a given dataset (e.g. Kepler)?

Given excellent observations of a cluster, we can constrain the properties of binaries. The parameters to fit would be the total binary fraction and the mass ratio distribution (maybe could be described using a slope or something).

An older cluster’s dynamical/tidal history through the Galaxy should affect it’s binary population. This might be an interesting way to constrain that history versus field stars. Or versus young clusters.

Other Cluster / EB ideas: It would be nice to have a definitive “Catalog of Variable Stars in M67” based on every available time domain dataset.

  • K2
  • 2MASS Cal-PSWDB
  • LINEAR
  • Catalina
  • several one-off datasets

Seems like a great hack-day idea too, doing really crappy forward or Monte Carlo model of what you should see, taking in best guesses for everything