A Holistic study of the eclipsing binary EQ Tau JPAR A holistic study of the eclipsing binary EQ Tau M. M. Elkhateeb *,1,2 and M. I. Nouh 1,2 E-mail: cairo_egypt10@yahoo.com 1 Department of Astronomy, National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, 11421 Helwan, Cairo, Egypt 2 Department of Physics, College of Science, Northern Border University, 1321 Arar, Saudi Arabia We present a new BVR light curves of the system EQ Tau carried out in the period from March to April 2006 using a 50-cm F/8.4 Ritchey–Chretien telescope (Ba50) of the Baja Astronomical Observatory (Hungary), and 512 × 512 Apogee AP-7 CCD camera. The observed light curves were analyzed using the 2004 version of the Wilson-Devinney code. The results show that the more massive component is hotter than the low massive one by 100 K. A long term orbital period study shows that the period increases by the rate 8.946 (±0.365) x10 -11 days/cycle. Evolutionary state of the system has been investigated and showed that, the primary component of the system is located nearly on the ZAMS for both the M-L and M-R relations. The secondary component is close to the TAMS track for M-L and above the M-R relations. Key Words: Eclipsing binaries, contact, period variation, orbital solution, evolutionary status INTRODUCTION The variability of the system EQ Tau (G2, V=12.04, P=0.341349) was discovered by Tsesevich (1954). The system was included to the AAVSO list of eclipsing, while the first period was calculated by Whitney (1972), while the first CCD light curve was carried out in R band by Benbow and Mutel (1995). The system was monitored by Buckner, Nellermoe and Mutel (1998), and Nelson (2001). The first reliable spectroscopic elements of the system were estimated by Rucinski et al. (2001). Successive observations were carried out from 2000 to 2002 in BV band pass by Pribulla and Vanko (2002), and Vanko et al. (2004). They combined the calculated photometric elements resulting from their observations with published spectroscopic elements to yield the absolute parameters of the system. Light curves asymmetry was noted by Yang and Liu (2002) through their BV observations and they adopted the first spot model for the system EQ Tau. Many photometric studies were applied for the system light curve by Hrivnak et al. (2006), Yuan and Qian (2007) and Alton (2006, 2009). Recently, during the work in the present analysis, Li et al. (2014) presents a new light curve analysis for the system. In the present paper, we use the Wilson-Devinney (WD) code to estimate the physical parameters of the contact binary EQ Tau and to study its evolutionary status. A long term orbital period study was performed using O-C method and a possible connection between the light curve variation and the period change of the system was studied OBSERVATIONS Observations of EQ Tau were carried out on five nights from March to April 2006 in B, V and R band pass using a 50- cm F/8.4 Ritchey–Chretien telescope (Ba50) of the Baja Astronomical Observatory (Hungary), and 512 × 512 Apogee AP-7 CCD camera. Table (1) lists the coordinates of the variable, the comparison and the check stars. It’s clear that the comparison and check stars are close to the variable and they were in the same field, thus the extinction corrections can Journal of Physics and Astronomy Research Vol. 1(3), pp. 015-034, November, 2014. © www.premierpublishers.org, ISSN: 2123-503X Research Article