@GuillaumeRossolini - it's impossible to be sure from the picture whether the planet's orbit (in red) is a circle that looks squished due to perspective, or a long thin ellipse. I agree with you that that a circle makes more sense, because then it never gets close to either star. I had thought it was a long thin ellipse!

As for the star's orbits, they look fine to me. They have a common focus. The focus of an ellipse is not in the middle, it's at one end! For example here's a planet going around a star in a long elliptical orbit:

@GuillaumeRossolini @slowenough @johncarlosbaez @andrewornot

It's like if the suns were clasping each other's hands in front.

And then the planet's orbit is like a big flat plate between the two of them, centered on their clasped hands.

Then just throw out the metaphor because the suns are moving around their mutual center too 😂

@leeloo @johncarlosbaez @andrewornot @slowenough this picture looks like an artist representation of the diagram in the original article (Fig. 5), not visually accurate?

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adu0627#F5