General Catalogue of Variable Stars

The General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) is a list of variable stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Its first edition, containing 10,820 stars, was published in 1948 by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, edited by Boris Kukarkin and Pavel Parenago. Second and third editions were published in 1958 and 1968. The fourth edition, containing 28,435 stars, was published in three volumes in 1985–1987. Later, two more volumes were published: the fourth volume containing reference tables and the fifth volume containing extragalactic variable stars. The first release of the fifth edition (GCVS 5.1), which is periodically updated, currently contains 58,035 variable stars; it is available at the GCVS website and at the VizieR astronomical catalogue service.