History of Science and Engineering Annotation << Back CATALOGUES OF VARIABLE STARS: PAST AND PRESENT N.N. Samus We consider the main directions of variable-star studies represented in the scientific research of the Institute of Astronomy (Russian Academy of Sciences). Since 1946, astronomers of the USSR Academy of Sciences and of the Lomonosov Moscow University jointly compiled the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS). The scope of this work greatly increased during the recent decades. After publication of four GCVS editions and of several catalogues of suspected variable stars in the book format, we are now preparing the catalogues in the electronic form. By its current status, the GCVS corresponds to the fi rst release of the fifth edition. Our team publishes the «Variable Stars» electronic journal, the Russia’s only professional journal devoted to stellar variability, established as a traditional journal as early as in 1928. We describe other principal tasks of the team: scanning the Moscow astronomical plate collection, the scans being used for discoveries and studies of variable stars; measuring stellar radial velocities; studying pulsating, X-ray, and cataclysmic variable stars. Keywords: star catalogues; variable stars. Contacts: Е-mail: samus@sai.msu.ru Pp. 75-87.