The General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) is a list of variable stars. Its first edition, containing 10,820 stars, was published in 1948 by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and edited by B. V. Kukarkin and P. P. Parenago. Second and third editions were published in 1958 and 1968; the fourth edition, in three volumes, was published 1985–1987. It contained 28,435 stars. A fourth volume of the fourth edition containing reference tables was later published, as well as a fifth volume containing variable stars outside the Galaxy.
The most up-to-date version of the GCVS is available at the GCVS website. It contains improved coordinates for the variable stars in the printed fourth edition of the GCVS, as well as variable stars discovered too recently to be included in the fourth edition. An older version of the GCVS dating from 2004 is available from the VizieR service at the Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg under the name Combined General Catalog of Variable Stars (GCVS4.2; VizieR database number II/250).
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“A universal and perpetual peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.”
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“There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady’s head-dress.”
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“There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
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—Hart Crane (1899–1932)