What is Variable Stars South

Variable Stars South is a loose association of astronomers, mainly amateur, interested in researching the rich and under-explored myriad of southern variable stars.

Renamed in 2009 from the Variable Star Section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand, it was founded in 1927 by the late Dr Frank Bateson, OBE, and became the recognised centre for Southern Hemisphere variable star research.

VSS covers many areas and techniques of variable star research. These are organised in technique areas such as DSLR work, and into project research groups carrying our research projects such as BL Tel, Beginners’ Visual Observations and Dual-Maxima Miras. The goal of each project is to obtain scientifically useful data and results. These may be published in recognised journals, supplied to international specialist data collection organisations or published on our website. Two examples of our publications are the Newsletter, and the Southern Eclipsing Binary Database.

VSS is entirely an Internet based organisation, working through its website www.VariableStarsSouth.org and its Google Group VariableStarsSouth.

VSS also encourages people to work in with major international organisations such as the Center for Backyard Astrophysics and the American Association for Variable Star Observers.

Join in our research!

Access to all the content on our website is free for anybody interested. To engage in the conversation and join in our research projects (listed under the Projects menu), you need to register for our Google Group discussion forum. You can contact the project leader via the Google Group to join in.