The GDDSYN light curve synthesis method

Abstract

We present a close binary system light curve synthesis algorighm called geodesic distribution binary synthesis (GDDSYN), which uses a novel surface element distribution and partial visibility computational scheme for the Roche model. The surface element distribution, based on the geodesic sphere, is well suited to maximum entropy imaging of surface features on eclipsing binaries. It allows the fitting of spot distributions which are less sensitive to observational errors than schemes which have too many low weight surface elements.