Symmetric eclipse fits to 748 OGLE I-band points give a period of 18.62835 days for OGLE-LMC-ECL-38842

We test the eclipse clock of the known binary OGLE-LMC-ECL-38842 with all 748 public OGLE I-band points from 2010 to 2024. Fixed symmetric eclipse profiles give a constant period of 18.62834775 days. This is 15.18 seconds shorter than the catalog value of 18.6285234 days. Across 500 whole-season resamples, the middle 95% period range is 18.62824624 to 18.62843807 days. All 13 omitted-season fits also give a shorter period. Alternate shapes give corrections from -15.18 to -12.84 seconds. A retrospective check on the last two seasons favors a period fitted to the earlier data. The fitted secondary center is -34.9 minutes from half a period after the primary. Its season range is -122.1 to 14.8 minutes, which includes zero. A common quadratic term and a linear change in secondary separation reduce chi square by only 2.35 for two extra coefficients. These tests support a revised linear eclipse clock under fixed symmetric profiles. They do not establish orbital decay or eccentricity. The analysis is exploratory. Only 13 observing seasons constrain the resampling ranges. The dates retain the supplied HJD clock. The package includes exact public inputs, source hashes, code, 1000 resample fits, control results, figures, and instructions for an offline repeat run.

OGLE-LMC-ECL-38842 · eclipsing binary · eclipse timing · linear ephemeris · OGLE-IV · TOI-785.01 · public data · reproducible astronomy