International observational campaigns of the last two eclipses in EE Cephei: 2003 and 2008/9

EE Cep is an unusual long-period 5.6 yr eclipsing binary discovered during the mid-twentieth century. It undergoes almost-grey eclipses that vary in terms of both depth and duration at different epochs. Two observational campaigns were carried out during the eclipses of EE Cep in 2003 and 2008/2009 to verify whether the eclipsing body in the system is indeed a dark disk and to understand the observed changes in the depths and durations of the eclipses. The complete set of observational data collected during the last three eclipses are made available to the astronomical community. The 2003 and 2008/2009 eclipses of EE Cep were very shallow. The latter is the shallowest among all observed. The very high quality photometric data illustrate in detail the colour evolution during the eclipses for the first time. These observations confirm that the eclipsing object in EE Cep system is indeed a dark, dusty disk around a low luminosity object.