The Variable Star Index is the largest amateur-led project to catalog and detail every variable star known in the Galaxy. It was launched in 2005 by importing as many catalogs of variable stars as were available. Since then, the number of sky surveys and new variable star discoveries has grown, as have the number of amateur and professional researchers finding new variable stars. In eleven years, VSX has grown to a catalog of almost 400,000 variable records.
Right now we try to keep the database updated, adding the new objects published in alert pages such as those from ASAS-SN, CRTS, Gaia and ATel. Exciting times are coming, because in the future LSST will present a very large number of alerts per day. Will we be able to manage this flood of new discoveries?
WE NEED YOUR HELP
You can help us to provide a better service to the community by maintaining our database up to date:
- Each day new papers on variable stars are published in different journals.
- Every day new transient objects are published in alert pages.
- Each month there are new lists to include in VSX, which means reformatting, cross-identifying and data-checking among other things.
How can you help? You can do it in many ways:
ADOPT A JOURNAL
CHECK ASTRO-PH
HELP US WITH LISTS PREPARATION
Please, download and read this document so you know what the three above tasks are all about.
With a lower priority, you may also want to help us with
FACT-CHECKING AND EDITING
- You can correct data using better information from the literature or surveys.
- You can revise any of the thousands of automated non-standard classifications made by surveys.
- You can also help us finding duplicate records in the database (that is the reason why we wrote "334,000 variable records" instead of variable "objects" in the introduction).
- You can also eventually learn about the moderation process and help us in case the current moderators are not available.
Once you join the VSX Team, you can subscribe to the VSX-moderate e-mail list where we can exchange information on different VSX work aspects.
Contact me at sebastian@aavso.org so I can give you more details and find out what project is suitable for you.
Thank you very much for your help!
VSX Volunteers:
Patrick Wils - All database behind the scenes stuff - Various updates - Lists imports - Moderation
Klaus Bernhard - Lists preparation
Learn more about VSX.