Classical Pulsators in Large-Scale Optical Photometric Surveys

Igor Soszyński

The first large-scale, long-term sky variability surveys – EROS, MACHO, and OGLE – were launched a quarter of a century ago. Such projects have quickly revolutionized the studies on variables stars, in particular on classical pulsators. Hundreds of thousands of new Cepheids, RR Lyrae stars, and other pulsating variables have been discovered. These huge samples of pulsating stars contain objects of very rare and even previously unknown types. Well-sampled, long-term light curves have been used to identify and characterize exotic behaviors, evolutionary changes, and various statistical features of variable stars. The complete catalogs of pulsating standard candles have been used to study the structure and evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies. We present the latest results on classical pulsating stars from the optical sky surveys, with particular focus on the OGLE project that collected a long-term photometric database for nearly one million variable stars.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 6, 29-36 (2018)

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