Research Information System
Conference on Living Together: Planets, Host Stars and Binaries, Litomysl, Czech Republic, 8 - 12 September 2014, vol.496, pp.395-399
To date no circumbinary planets around a contact binary have been discovered, either by the transit method or from eclipse timing variations, even though such binaries are occasionally known to have wide stellar companions. We thus ask: Where are the circumbinary planets of contact binaries? We have simulated the light curves of contact binaries with possible transiting Jovian circumbinary planets considering the available physical and geometric constraints on the system parameters. It would seem that either circumbinary Jovian planets are not formed at all around contact binaries, possibly due to dynamical effects from the binary or third component stars, or that they are present but their discovery has not been possible so far due to larger distortions than expected in the photometric data or in the times of minimum.