On Mar 15, 5:32 pm, HW@....(Henri Wilson) wrote:

I also had to adjust both the comparative brightness and
orbit speed of the 'outer star'. Both values are about 0.4
of the inner star. ...which provides an indication of the
relative masses. I achieved an even closer match when I
included a third object wirth a 90 degree phase shift.

YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!!

There is no way that adding the third object where you do
could result in a stable orbital configuration.

In every paper I have read about cepheids the authors
state straight out that they have no model that can
explain the brightness variations .

You are obviously not up on the latest research. With
recent advances in supercomputer capabilities, it has been
possible for astrophysicists to include in their models
effects that previously had to be ignored, because modeling
those effects required computational power far exceeding
that which had been available.

The state of the art in Cepheid modeling as of early 2005
is described in the following link:
http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/astro/cepheids/program.html

In the last couple of years, I've seen even better results!

Jerry