The Monitor project: tracking the evolution of low mass and pre-main sequence stars

TL;DR

The Monitor project conducts extensive photometric and spectroscopic observations of young open clusters to discover and analyze low-mass eclipsing binaries, providing empirical data to test stellar evolution models.

Contribution

It presents the first three low-mass eclipsing binaries from the survey, deriving their physical parameters and comparing them with theoretical models.

Findings

Derived masses and radii of binary components.

Compared observations with theoretical models.

Identified discrepancies between models and observations.

Abstract

The Monitor project is a large-scale program of photometric and spectroscopic monitoring of young open clusters using telescopes at ESO and other observatories. Its primary goal is to detect and characterise new low-mass eclipsing binaries, and the first three detected systems are discussed here. We derive the masses and radii of the components of each system directly from the light and radial velocity curves, and compare them to the predictions of commonly used theoretical evolutionary models of low-mass stars.