Variable stars in and around NGC 2264 with BEST

A total of 1161 variable stars were detected, of which 241 were previously known and 920 are newly found. Several new, variable young stellar objects have been discovered.

The study of the spatial distribution of eclipsing binaries revealed the higher relative frequency of Algols toward the center of the young open cluster NGC 2264. In general Algol frequency obeys an isotropic distribution of their angular momentum vectors, except inside the cluster, where a specific orientation of the inclinations is the case. We suggest that we see the orbital plane of the binaries almost edge-on.