N.N.

Samus1,2,3
S.V. Antipin2,1
1
Institute of Astronomy, Russian Acad. Sci.
2
Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Moscow University
3
Euro-Asian Astronomical Society

Variable Stars
and Data-Intensive Astronomy
XXVIII General Assembly of the IAU, SPS15
Beijing, August 31, 2012
Principal problem: No amplitude limit defining a variable star.
General Catalogue of Variable Stars: peak-to-peak amplitudes from
>19m (V1500 Cyg) down to 0.004m (α Aql).

The combined light curve of 18 hours of space-borne infrared

V1500 Cyg (Nova Cyg 1975) photometry of Altair (D. Buzasi et
al., 2005, ApJ, 619, 1072)

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 CCD Discoveries of Galactic Variable Stars

USNO-B1.0 catalog (2003):

1,042,618,261 objects (stars and galaxies),
~ 1 billion stars to 20–21m
One star of 80–100 is variable at the 0m.03–0m.05 level,
and thus ~10 million variable stars are potentially detectible with a
ground-based 1-m telescope, ordinary CCD detector, and standard
software for automatic search for variable stars.
Currently (August 2012) known are ~ 212000 variable stars of our
Galaxy (International Star Register of the AASVO – VSX, the web
facility working quite independently of the GCVS but keeping close
everyday contact), i.e. ~2% of those potentially detectable using
CCD techniques.

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Prospects of Variable-Star Discoveries

known variables
200 000

Variables not yet known

10 000 000

And what is this?

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 V376 Peg (HD 209458): the
first star of our Galaxy with
photometrically detected
transits of a big exoplanet
across the stellar disk (S. Jha
et al., 2000, 540, L45). New
possibilities for surface
mapping! Such eclipses are
observable even for amateur
astronomers.

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A transit observed for the same star by the Hubble Space Telescope
(T. Brown et al., 2001, ApJ, 552, 699)

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The ASAS-3 survey (G. Pojmanski). Two 20-cm telescopes. Southern
sky. Some 30000 new variable stars. Observations of some 15000000
stars online.
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 The ROTSE-I/NSVS survey. Northern sky. A small fraction of
possible variable-star discoveries made by the authors, photometry of
about 14000000 stars online. The light curve shown is for T And

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By New Year 2012, open access was provided
to photometry of the Catalina Sky Survey (50 –
70-cm Schmidt telescopes, all the northern sky
except the Milky Way strip, very-high-quality
photometry, working magnitudes from 13 to 19)

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New Types
Accretion-Disk Precession

(A.V. Khruslov, 2011, PZP, 11, 17)

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RR Lyrae Stars with Two Closely Spaced
Frequencies

P1/P2 = 0.90 ÷ 0.99

(S. Antipin & J. Jurcsik, 2005, IBVS,

No. 5632)

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Considerable Number Increase of Several
Variability Types During Recent Years

• BY Dra / RS CVn
• High-Amplitude Delta Scuti Stars (HADSs)
• Double-Mode Cepheids
• Eclipsing Variables

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Number increase of known double-mode Cepheids (mainly due to
data mining in ASAS-3 data)

18 in 2000
38 in 2010
(23 of them, F+1O,
and 15, 1O+2O)
Khruslov’s discoveries
(as of 2012):
12 double-mode
Cepheids,
11 of them 1O+2O
+ 3 similar RR near (A.V. Khruslov, 2010, PZP, 10, 16)
galactic plane
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One of the scanners used to digitize the Moscow plate stacks

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D.M. Kolesnikova et al. (2008, AcA, 58,
279; 2010, ARep, 54, 1000) discovered,
in a field of 100 square degrees
reasonably well studied using traditional
methods, almost 500 new variable stars.

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Number Increase of Known HADS Variables

(D.M. Kolesnikova et al., 2010)

Search for variables using scans of plates from Moscow stacks. In the
field centered at 66 Oph, 10°x10° (less than 0.25% of the total area of
the sky), 13 HADSs were detected, leading to an estimate >5000 for
the whole sky. The GCVS number of Delta Scuti stars with
amplitudes of at least 0m.2 is 121.
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Different Period Distribution of Eclipsing Stars
from the Same Scans
The period distribution of newly discovered eclipsing stars is
considerably shifted towards shorter periods (the GCVS frequencies
are in brackets):

P EA EB EW
0.2–0.4 d 13% (1.7%) 50% (47.8%)
0.4–0.6 d 47% (15.4%) 42% (30.9%)
0.6–0.8 d 22% (3.7%) 22% (17.8%) 6% (14.0%)
0.8–1.0 d 17% (5.0%) 9% (13.4%) 2% (5.5%)
>1 d 61% (89.2%) 9% (51.7%)

(D.M. Kolesnikova et al., 2010)

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Problems of Variable-Star Classification in Sky
Surveys

•The existing classification systems (GCVS etc.) are far

from being perfect;
•good software for automatic classification is not available;
•it is very tiresome to manually classify thousands of new
discoveries;
•in many cases, classification solely from the light curve is
impossible; additional information on the spectral type, X-
rays, radial velocity variations is needed.

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 Problems of Variable-Star Classification

Eclipses?

Pulsations?

Rotational variability of
a spotted star?

(V. Solovyov, A. Samokhvalov, B. Satovskiy,

2011, PZP, 11, 14)

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SPACE MISSIONS

The first space mission that

discovered many variable
stars: HIPPARCOS (ESA,
29-cm telescope, in operation
in 1989–1993)
About 5000 new variables
discovered
About 3000 new variables
added to the GCVS (others
remained insufficiently well
studied)
 Just a 27-cm telescope!
Corot main goals:
– Asteroseismology
– Search for exoplanets

Corot mission launched

with a Russian rocket
(December 2006) Phase effects and an eclipse of an
exoplanet (I.A.G. Snellen et al., 2009,
Beijing, 2012 Nature, 459, 543)
Kepler mission (NASA): a 95-cm telescope. Monitors a field at the
boundary of Cygnus and Lyra. Launched on March 7, 2009.
As of August 8, 2012 (no changes for several recent months…),
discovery of 2321 exoplanet candidates was announced; 74 of
them confirmed. Also announced are 2165 discoveries of eclipsing
variable stars. Stars with amplitudes of several thousandths of a
magnitude show reliable details on their light curves! New types of
eclipsing (+ pulsating) stars

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 KEPLER Mission

42 CCDs, 2200х1024
~ 150 000 stars
Expected active time: 3.5 years
Able to detect a transit of an
earth-type planet of a solar-
type star at a 4σ level

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 A Couple of New Kepler Var’s

Ampl = 0m.06

Ampl = 0m.006

(J. Greaves, 2010, PZP, 10, 7)

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KEPLER Observatory

Preliminary results:
Of ~ 150 000 program stars,
~ 60 000 are periodic variables,
~ 34 000 stars vary with poorly detectable periodicity or
aperiodically
(G. Basri et al., 2011, AJ, 141, 20)

Two thirds of all stars are variable for KEPLER precision

of photometry!

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GAIA mission (ESA). Expected launch: 2013 (as of August 2012,
the particular month, March, has recently disappeared from the
GAIA web site), with a Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket to the L2
point. Astrometry, photometry. Is expected to discover several
million new variables down to the 20th magnitude (no better
prediction on the GAIA web site!). Two 1.45×0.5-m telescopes

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 The planned Russian space experiment
“Lyra” on board the International Space
Station

A 50-cm telescope. Multicolor

photometry (catalog) of 100 to 400
million stars; the whole sky observed
some 20 times per year. The project is
being worked on at the Sternberg Institute
(Moscow)

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THE GENERAL CATALOGUE OF VARIABLE STARS
(GCVS) – SINCE 1946 ON BEHALF OF THE
INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMCAL UNION

P.P. Parenago B.V. Kukarkin P.N. Kholopov

(1906 – 1960) (1909 – 1977) (1922 – 1988)

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The GCVS team

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Current contents of the GCVS:
about 45700 “named” variable stars (about 2150 will be added
before the end of 2012);
about 20000 “suspected” variable stars.

Compare to about 212000 variable stars in the AAVSO VSX.

So far, evaluation of information for the GCVS is still made on the

star-by-star basis by staff members of the GCVS. No software able
to provide classification of variable stars with uncertainties within
reasonable limits. WE ARE BEHIND THE FLOW OF
DISCOVERIES!

New classification system badly needed. However, it seems that

new discoveries change the general picture too strongly to introduce
it now!
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Final Remarks

• With full-scale results from Kepler (and then from similar

missions) approaching, everything we know about variability
statistics will have to be revised;
• The era of traditional variable-star catalogs is probably near its end,
despite traditional Argelander-style variable-star names being still
popular;
• A possible solution could be universal star catalogs, with variability
information as a minor part of them;
• The commission established by the IAU C27 six years ago to study
the future of variable-star catalogs apparently finds no brilliant ideas
how to proceed in order to solve this problem, really important for
the astronomical community.
• New ideas from the virtual-observatory community are welcome.

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Thank you!!!

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