General Catalogue of Variable Stars 


 



GCVS RESEARCH GROUP
INTERNATIONAL SERVICE OF VARIABLE STARS: NAMING, CLASSIFICATION, IDENTIFICATION


General Catalogue of Variable Stars
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After the 2nd World War, the Executive Committee of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) made two groups in Moscow responsible for catalogues of variable stars. These groups belonged to Moscow University and to the Academy of Sciences; principal investigators, in the course of the 2nd half of the XXth century, were P.P. Parenago, B.V. Kukarkin, P.N. Kholopov. Presently, the variable-star catalogue groups still exist within the Sternberg Astronomical Institute and the Institute of Astronomy of Russian Academy of Sciences.

Both teams are headed by Dr. Nikolai Samus who is a member of the Organizing Committee of the IAU Commission 27 (Variable Stars).

The Sternberg Astronomical Institute part of the team includes:

The Institute of Astronomy of Russian Academy of Sciences part of the team includes:

The variable star team in Moscow prepares catalogues of variable and suspected variable stars, Namelists of confirmed variable stars. It develops the system of variable star classification to be used in catalogues. We consider our primary task to make it possible easily to find, using improved coordinates, any variable stars discovered prior to the advent of automatic surveys; to introduce, gradually, automatic-survey discoveries into the existing system of variable-star catalogues; to prevent assigning duplicated names to a single variable star; to improve the classification of variable stars taking into account modern astrophysical knowledge.

The products prepared by the team are presently available in electronic form. Into all electronic products, corrections of revealed mistakes are being regularly introduced. Printed copies of some products are available upon request aliressed to samus@sai.msu.ru; conditions of the purchase are different for different groups of users who can inquire about them by Dr. Samus. Printed copies may differ from electronic versions.

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