General Catalogue of Variable Stars

The General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) is a list of variable stars in the Milky Way Galaxy^[a]. Its first edition, containing 10,820 stars, was published in 1948 by the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, edited by Boris Kukarkin [ru] and Pavel Parenago.^[1] 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.^[2][3] Later, two more volumes were published: the fourth volume containing reference tables and the fifth volume containing extragalactic variable stars.^[3] The first release of the fifth edition (GCVS 5.1), which is periodically updated, currently contains 58,035 variable stars;^[4][5] it is available at the GCVS website and at the VizieR astronomical catalogue service.