Observational tests of the GAIA expected harvest on eclipsing binaries

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of GAIA observations to significantly improve the measurement of stellar parameters in eclipsing binaries, using real data and simulations to assess techniques and automation needs.

Contribution

It provides an empirical assessment of GAIA's capability to accurately determine fundamental parameters of eclipsing binaries and highlights the importance of automation in data processing.

Findings

GAIA can derive accurate stellar parameters for ~10,000 eclipsing binaries.

Ground-based and GAIA-like observations help validate recognition and analysis techniques.

Automation is crucial for handling the large data volume from GAIA.

Abstract

GAIA observations of eclipsing binary stars will have a large impact on stellar astrophysics. Accurate parameters, including absolute masses and sizes will be derived for $\sim 10^4$ systems, orders of magnitude more than what has ever been done from the ground. Observations of 18 real systems in the GAIA-like mode as well as with devoted ground-based campaigns are used to assess binary recognition techniques, orbital period determination, accuracy of derived fundamental parameters and the need to automate the whole reduction and interpretation process.