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ISSN 1063-7737, Astronomy Letters, 2006, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 263273. c Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2006. Original Russian Text c N.N. Samus', O.V. Durlevich, A.V. Zharova, E.V. Kazarovets, N.N. Kireeva, E.N. Pastukhova, D.B. Williams, M.L. Hazen, 2006, published in Pis'ma v Astronomicheski Zhurnal, 2006, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 295306. i

Electronic Version of the Third Volume of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars with Improved Coordinates
N. N. Samus'1, 2 * , O. V. Durlevich2, A. V. Zharova2 , E. V. Kazarovets1 , N. N. Kireeva1 , E. N. Pastukhova1, D. B. Williams3 , and M. L. Hazen4
1

Institute of Astronomy, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Pyatnitskaya 48, 2 Sternberg Astronomical Institute, Universitetskii pr. 13, Moscow, 3 American Association of Variable Star Observers, 25 Birch Str., Cambri 4 Harvard College Observatory, 60 Garden Str., Cambridge, MA
Received October 31, 2005

Moscow, 119017 Russia 119992 Russia dge, MA 02138, USA 02138, USA

Abstract--We present a new electronic version of the third volume of the fourth edition of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) that contains data on 13 855 variables in the constellations Pavo Vulpecula. The Name Lists of Variable Stars from no. 67 to no. 77 were included in the new version. The main distinctive feature of the new version is that improved J2000.0 equatorial coordinates (including those for 6163 stars corrected for the proper motions) based on the identifications with positional catalogues using finding charts and on our new measurements are presented for 13 812 stars. We searched for a number of stars on original plates from the plate stacks of several observatories and using images from digital sky surveys. Apart from the complete update of the positional information, we made several corrections that were found to be necessary after the publication of the GCVS Volume III (1985) and several corrections of the information about the variability features based on photometry from currently available automatic sky surveys. A number of problem identifications are described in detail. The new version completes our longterm work on the complete revision of the positional information in the GCVS. In the Conclusions, we give a list of references to new Internet resources. PACS numbers : 97.30.-b; 97.80.Hn DOI: 10.1134/S1063773706040074 Key words: stars--variable and peculiar.

INTRODUCTION This paper completes the series of our publications on the new electronic versions of the volumes of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) with improved coordinates (Samus' et al. 2002, 2003; Papers I and II) and presents a similar version of the GCVS Volume III. The new electronic version is based on the fourth GCVS edition (Kholopov et al. 19851988); its Volumes IIII contain data on 28 435 variable stars of our Galaxy (without including the named variable stars that proved to be nonexistent, e.g., minor planets taken for stars, artifacts due to repeated exposures of a plate, etc.). With the succeeding eleven Name Lists of Variable Stars (from no. 67 to no. 77) included, the number of named Galactic variable stars in 2003 exceeded 38 500. The standard accuracy of the variable star coordinates presented in all the printed GCVS editions since 1948 (to 1 s of time
*

E-mail: samus@sai.msu.ru

in right ascension and to 0.1 arcmin in declination, with a substantial fraction of the GCVS stars having coordinates still less accurate than this standard or just erroneous coordinates) does not meet the current requirements formulated in more detail in Paper I. Therefore, we set the objective of preparing a GCVS version with improved coordinates for all of the catalogued stars, where possible, that would also include their proper motions if they can be found in the existing positional catalogues. This paper completes the implementation of this program. When working on the new electronic version of Volume III, we set out to revise the information about the pattern of variability provided in the GCVS using, in particular, photometric data from currently available automatic sky surveys. A continuation of this revision will be an important objective of our future studies.
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THE CATALOGUE PREPARATION METHODS The catalogue preparation methods were described in detail in Paper I. In general, they have undergone no changes. The possibilities for effectively identifying variable stars with positional catalogues continue to improve. In compiling the new version of the GCVS Volume III, apart from the sources listed in Papers I and II, we actively used such new catalogues as the Second US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog, UCAC2 (Zacharias et al. 2004; more than 48 300 000 stars with significantly improved proper motions compared to the previous version) and the complete version of the all-sky 2.2 µm survey, 2MASS (Cutry et al. 2003, 471 000 000 point infrared sources). As previously, the SIMFOV code written and continuously improved by A.A. Volchkov until the last days of his life served as the main tool for visualizing astronomical catalogues and retrieving data from them. During our work on the electronic version of the GCVS Volume III, he made changes to the code that allowed us to perform identifications also with the complete version of the 2MASS catalogue and the UCAC2 catalogue. Recall that the code makes it possible to display a chart of the selected sky field on the required scale containing objects from catalogues of a given list and then to view it zooming in and out and to retrieve information contained in the corresponding catalogue for any image. This code enables automatic identifications of user lists with catalogues based on the coordinates with (or without) allowance for the coincidence of the magnitudes. It is possible to view images, retrieve information, and compare lists for the coordinates referred to any equinox. As before, we used published and unpublished finding charts of variable stars. For the GCVS Volume III, as previously for Volume II, the photographic finding charts of stars sent to the GCVS team in the 1960s by L. Plaut (the Netherlands), the discoverer of their variability, were of particular importance. Such charts are available for some 2000 variable stars in Sagittarius, a constellation in the GCVS Volume III. As previously, in many cases, we recovered variable stars based on images from the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS; the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute), the Aladin Sky Atlas (the Center for Astronomical Data, Strasbourg), and the US Naval Observatory Image and Catalog Archive, as well as plates from the plate collection of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute (SAI), the Harvard Observatory plate stacks, and other archives, to take into account the marks left by the discoverers on the plates of the Harvard stacks and the sketches in the discoverers' notebooks from the Harvard archive.

If a variable star was absent in the existing positional catalogues, we measured its coordinates on original plates or available digital sky images. This often had to be done also to determine the coordinates for variable components of visual double stars or for variable stars in clusters. However, the fraction of the stars for which we had to resort to this technique for Volume III was not very large primarily owing to the complete 2MASS catalogue invaluable for crowded star fields. Without this catalogue, the work in crowded fields of, e.g., Sagittarius in Volume III would have inevitably led to numerous mistake