EE Cep is an eclipsing binary with a period of 5.6 years. The next eclipse
will occur soon, in May-June 2003, and all available past eclipses were
collected and briefly analysed. EE Cep shows very large changes of the shape
and the depth of minima during different eclipses, however it is possible to
single out some persistent features. The analysis suggests that the eclipsing
body should be a long object surrounded by an extended semi-transparent
envelope. As an explanation, a model of a precessing optically thick disc,
inclined to the plane of the binary orbit, is invoked. The changes of its
spatial orientation, which is defined by the inclination of the disc and the
tilt, induced most probably by precession of the disc spin axis with a period
of about 50 years, produce strange photometric behaviour of this star. The
H_alpha emission, and possibly the NaI absorptions, show significant changes
during several months outside of the eclipse phase.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, LaTeX2e, accepted by A&