Seismology and modeling of the bright, wide eclipsing binary γ Persei

γ Persei is a naked-eye, very wide binary system, in which eclipses occur every 14.6 years. Unlike the 1990 and 2019 eclipses, the 2005 eclipse was not observed due to the star's proximity to the Sun. However, we were able to extract the eclipse from the space-based SMEI observations. More recently, TESS observed the star in two of its sectors and, by pure coincidence, one of those included the 2019 eclipse of the system. Although the primary star is a large red giant, which makes its oscillation frequencies very low, we were able to estimate its 𝜈_max. From that, we estimate the mass of the primary to be about 2.5 M⊙, based on scaling relations. Previous estimates of the primary's mass varied between 2.5 and 3.5 M⊙, and physical parameters suggested the possibility of the components being not coeval, i.e., that one of them was a merger product. We then modeled the system with the PHOEBE code, fitting historical radial-velocity measurements and multicolor and TESS photometry of the eclipses. With the help of this model, we also detected a secondary eclipse, for the first time, in the SMEI light curve.