Pavel Mayer discovered that the star's brightnessvaries in 1964.[8] The eclipsing pair form aBeta Lyrae-typesemidetached binary of twoBp stars[3] with a period of 1.81147435 days.[4] During the primary eclipse, the visual magnitude of the system drops to 8.89, while for the secondary it decreases to 8.74.[3][9] The third component is a massive object with17–18M☉, and may actually be a binary – which would make this a quadruple star system.[7]
^Mayer, P.; Drechsel, H. (September 1987), "Up-to-date parameters of the eclipsing triple system IU AUR",Astronomy and Astrophysics,183 (1):61–65,Bibcode:1987A&A...183...61M.
^abDrechsel, H.; Haas, S.; Lorenz, R.; Mayer, P. (April 1994), "New photometric and spectroscopic results for IU Aurigae -- an early-type eclipsing binary in a multiple system",Astronomy and Astrophysics,284 (3):853–864,Bibcode:1994A&A...284..853D.
