Left mouse button over the plot moves the centre of the plot.
Right mouse button over the plot adjusts the axis ranges.
The left-hand cartoon is the plane of the orbit scaled by the semimajor axis viewed from above. The direction of the observer is indicated with a dashed line.
The right-hand cartoon is the plane of the sky scaled by the stellar radius with the planet drawn where it is at inferior conjunction. The stellar equator is indicated with a dashed line and the path of the planet with a solid line.
Normalized phase of zero is defined here to be at inferior conjunction, not minimum light.
b is the impact parameter at inferior conjunction, defined here as:
b = a cos i (1 − e2) / (R1 (1 + e sin ω))
This is also where the planet is drawn on the right-hand cartoon.
u1 and u2 are the parameters of a standard quadratic limb darkening law:
I(μ)/I0 = 1 − u1 (1 − μ) − u2 (1 − μ)2
The ranges used for the limb darkening parameters are somewhat arbitrary and don't include all possible limb darkening laws. Values producing unrealistic or unphysical limb darkening laws are highlighted in red.
This page uses a lot of "fairly new" HTML and Javascript features and was developed on Firefox and Chrome. It probably doesn't work on some other browsers.