TESS Eclipsing Binary stars. I. Sectors 1-26

We discuss selection criteria for eclipsing binary candidates, detection of hitherto unknown eclipsing systems, determination of the ephemerides, the validation and triage process, and the derivation of heuristic estimates for the ephemerides. Instead of keeping to the widely used discrete classes, we propose a binary star morphology classification based on a dimensionality reduction algorithm.

Finally, we present statistical properties of the sample, we qualitatively estimate completeness, and we discuss the results. The work presented here is organized and performed within the TESS Eclipsing Binary Working Group, an open group of professional and citizen scientists; we conclude by describing ongoing work and future goals for the group.