  An important question when studying the light curves produced by hot spots on
the surface of rotating neutron stars is, how might the shape of the light
curve be affected by relaxing some of the simplifying assumptions that one
would adopt on a first treatment of the problem, such as that of a point-like
spot. In this work we explore the dependence of light curves on the size and
shape of a single hot spot on the surface of slowly-rotating neutron stars.
More specifically, we consider two different shapes for the hot spots (circular
and annular) and examine the resulting light curves as functions of the opening
angle of the hot spot (for both) and width (for the latter). We find that the
point-like approximation can describe light curves reasonably well, if the
opening angle of the hot spot is less than $\sim 5^\circ$. Furthermore, we find
that light curves from annular spots are almost the same as those of the full
circular spot if the opening angle is less than $\sim 35^\circ$ independently
of the hot spot's width.
