Large fraction of blends from Rowan et al. (2023)

ABSTRACT Following the work by Rowan et al., I found that a large fraction of systems presented as triple/quadruple stars are in fact only blends. After careful inspection of 225 candidate systems from Rowan et al., I found that one-third of them are, in fact, only blended signals of two different eclipsing binaries, well separated from each other on the sky. Their typical angular separation is dozens of arcsec, reaching up to more than 100 arcsec for some targets. This is probably due to relatively large TESS pixels and insufficient cross-checking of all available catalogues and photometric data. I present a list of 76 confirmed blends with their correct identification and respective periods. Such a high fraction (33.8 per cent) of reported false-positive systems should be taken into account in future studies, when reporting to new discoveries of doubly eclipsing candidates.