timothydmorton
commented
9 years ago Sorry, just realized I'm speaking nonsense here! (In my defense, I thought about this literally as I was falling asleep last night and wrote this this morning without really reconsidering...) Your maximum depth limit is calculated assuming (a) the entire BG star is in the aperture and (b) the star dims maximally....and even that most optimistic scenario could not reproduce the depth we see. So all good, my bad.
@benmontet, in the FP section, you talk about calculating the "maximum depth" that a background star could produce in a diluted scenario. Presumably you're calculating this by assuming the total flux in the aperture is F_target + F_other, where F_other is the total flux from the other star, and that F_other dims by 50%?
The problem with this is that F_other should not be the total flux in the other star but rather the flux in the aperture, which may be only a fraction of the actual flux from the background star (e.g. if only the wings leak into the aperture). So unless you know that the aperture is actually fully containing these stars, then that number won't be right.