Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21810306p&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #218, #103.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Thanks to organizations such as the AAVSO, visual observations of variable stars have scientific strengths: they are numerous, sustained, and standardized. Though many have predicted the demise of visual observation, the demand for visual observations increased dramatically in the last quarter of the 20th century. In addition to their value in detecting, timing, and studying outbursts in CVs, fadings in R CrB stars, and eclipses in binaries, they are uniquely useful in studying the behavior of pulsating stars, especially slow, irregular, and long-term behavior. In this presentation, I will give a general review of this topic, but will highlight the nature and implications of my own work on such stars: Mira stars, smaller-amplitude pulsating red giants, RV Tauri and SRd variables, and supergiant variables across the H-R diagram. This work includes studies of variability, periodicity, multiperiodicity, irregularity, period changes (systematic and random), and long-term variability of unknown cause. This work provides important information about stellar processes, properties, structure, and evolution. For studying long-term variability, the AAVSO International Database is a uniquely valuable resource. Much of this work has been carried out by students, motivated by the excitement of doing real science, with real data, thereby developing and integrating their science, math, and computing skills. We present at AAVSO meetings, and publish in the JAAVSO, as feedback and motivation to observers. Acknowledgements: I thank NSERC Canada for research support, my students for their work and inspiration, and the AAVSO staff and observers who make this work possible.
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