Description
Cyclic period changes are a fairly common phenomenon in close binary systems and are usually explained as being caused either by the magnetic activity of one or both components or by the light travel time effect (LTTE) of a third body. We searched the orbital period changes in 182 EA-type (including the 101 Algol systems used by Hall, 1989, Space Sci. Rev., 50, 219), 43 EB-type and 53 EW-type binaries with known mass ratio and spectral type of the secondary component. We reproduced and improved the diagram in Hall according to the new collected data.
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