The Royal Road: Eclipsing Binaries and Transiting Exoplanets, 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Two years ago, Universe published a Special Issue devoted to papers on recent results based on ultraprecise photometry obtained using space-telescopes searching for planetary transits. That Special Issue was about eclipsing binary and multiple stars, as well as transiting exoplanets. While the primary goal of these space missions (CoRoT, Kepler, K2, and TESS) was to detect and characterize transiting exoplanets, they also provided thousands of high-duty-cycle and almost-uninterrupted ultraprecise light curves of eclipsing binary stars. They revolutionized the field of exoplanet research and binary star studies. The nine papers published in the former Special Issue, entitled ‘The Royal Road: Eclipsing Binaries and Transiting Exoplanets’, covered wide ranges of the related fields, such as the following:

• Analyses of tight, multiple-eclipsing triple and quadruple stellar systems;
• Detections of higher-order gravitational perturbations, and other gravity-induced phenomena in such multiples;
• Exotic phenomena, e.g., tidal decay in specific exoplanets;
• Exomoon candidates;
• Dynamics of circumplanetary disks.

The first Special Issue been touched only the thin surface of the vast and deep ocean that is the science of eclipsing stellar and transiting exoplanetary systems. Therefore, we intend to address these same research areas in a second Special Issue. There is another reason to announce a second Special Issue, namely that, in the meantime, significant progress has been made in these fields due to the continuous operations of such space telescopes like the Transiting Exoplanetary Survey Satellite (TESS) and CHEOPS or, the recently retired instrument, Gaia, which were not covered in the previous Special Issue.

We are looking forward to the PLATO (to be launched in December, 2026), which will provide a vast new ultraprecise photometric database of about 1 million stars. We are also wondering what JWST can do for eclipsing binary and exoplanet research.

Therefore, this second Special Issue will target the same topics, being those related to the analysis and information content of light curves showing eclipsing and transiting events. Some of them are classical problems which are put in a new light in the era of ultraprecise space photometry. Some other issues have become widely observable with space photometry (e.g., only few heart-beat binaries were known by ground-based observations, and hundreds were discovered using space photometry; the beaming effect was found using space photometry using CoRoT for the first time). Instead of giving such a detailed, lengthy list of those effects, we instead call for contributions—original research and review papers—to this Special Issue, which may include any topic related to the extraction of information from eclipse/transit light curves, ETVs/TTVs, the phase curves of eclipsing binary stars, and transiting exoplanets. We encourage submissions on light curve analysis of ultraprecise high-duty-cycle space-based photometries, but contributions are not limited to space-photometry.

We would like to emphasize that this second Special Issue is not limited to the aforementioned areas, but it is open to every aspect of eclipsing binary and transiting exoplanet research that utilizes the photometric time series of these systems. We add that studies of out-of-eclipse/out-of-transit variations, like exoplanetary phase curves, the albedo and other properties of eclipsing binary stars, and statistical analyses of any properties of these systems, their formation, and their evolution are also welcome.

We look forward receiving and publishing the most recent interesting results (and their reviews as well) obtained from the very recent space- and ground-based observations, as well as studies on their theory, in this Special Issue on ‘The Royal Road: Eclipsing Binaries and Transiting Exoplanets, 2nd Edition’ of the journal Universe.

Dr. Tamás Borkovits
Dr. Szilard Csizmadia
Guest Editors

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• eclipsing binaries
• transiting exoplanets
• eclipse and transit timing variations
• hierarchical multiple systems
• multi-planet systems
• ellipsoidal, reflection, and beaming effects of binary stars
• phase curves of exoplanets
• atmospheres of exoplanets
• dynamics of multiple systems
• formation and evolution of binary systems and planetary systems
• interior structure of stars and planets
• occurrence rates and frequencies of planets, brown dwarfs, and stars

• The Royal Road: Eclipsing Binaries and Transiting Exoplanets in Universe (9 articles)