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Description
This catalog, also called the Finding List (FL) of Interacting Binaries (5th edition), was abstracted from the Card Catalog maintained at the University of Florida which contains information on all published, and to the extent available, unpublished work on eclipsing binaries. The Card Catalog originated with Raymond Smith Dugan in the 1930's, who published from it the first edition of "A Finding List for Observers of Eclipsing Variables" (Dugan 1934, Princeton Univ. Obs. Contrib. No. 15). Successive editions of FL were subsequently published by Pierce (1947, Princeton Univ. Obs. Contrib. No. 22), by Wood (1953, Univ. Pennsylvania Astron. Series, Vol. VIII), by Koch et al. (1963, Univ. Pennsylvania Astron. Series, Vol. IX), and by Wood et al. (1980, Univ. Pennsylvania Astron. Series, Vol. XII). The FL was conceived as an aid to observers of eclipsing variables in selecting an observing program efficiently from the collection of all known data in an easy-to-use format. Although this format has changed over the years to meet existing requirements, the basic information content remains the same. The current edition differs from previous ones in the extension of the magnitude limit at minimum light from 13 to 15. In earlier editions, a binary system was not included unless the editors were reasonably certain that the system was indeed an eclipsing or (rarely) an ellipsoidal variable. The fifth edition includes all systems that the editors were fairly certain are either eclipsing or radiometrically variable binaries. The catalog fields are Finding List number; star name; position (given in the original catalog in equinox 1900); blue magnitude at maximum light; bandpass of maximum light; depth of primary minimum in same bandpass; bandpass primary minimum; depth of secondary minimum and its bandpass; spectral class of star eclipsed at primary light and optional uncertainty character; spectral class of star eclipsed at secondary light; most recent reliable epoch of primary minimum; most recent orbital period; duration of primary minimum; duration of totality of primary minimum; BD, CoD, CPD, and HD number; alternate designations of system; and codes indicating the nature of the system. This database was created by the HEASARC in December 1997 based on a computer readable version of the catalog that was obtained from the CDS (their catalog VI/44): a few additions were made by the HEASARC that are listed in the HEASARC_Changes section of the present document. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .
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