Encyclopedia
Variability classes
One page per class: what it is, why it varies, and example stars from the archive.
Composition
Stars by family
Tile area is the number of stars per VSX family. Click a tile to open its page.
10,304,679stars, by VSX type
Families
Browse by family
Eclipsing
Binary stars dimming as one passes the other.
2,637,124 stars · EW · EA · EB
RR Lyrae
Old pulsators, the standard candles of the halo.
316,977 stars · RRab · RRc · RRd
Cepheids
Bright pulsators tracing the cosmic distance ladder.
17,055 stars · DCEP · CW
δ Scuti
Low-amplitude pulsators near the main sequence, from minutes to a few days.
747,748 stars · DSCT · HADS · GDOR
Long-period
Red giants breathing over months: Miras & semiregulars.
2,345,508 stars · M · SR · L
Rotational
Spotted, magnetically active stars modulated by spin.
3,262,868 stars · ROT · RS · BY
Eruptive / CV
Young stars, flares, and cataclysmic outbursts.
118,684 stars · YSO · CV · GCAS
Other
AGN, X-ray binaries, and the not-yet-classified.
858,715 stars · VAR · AGN · LMXB
Classifier model card
Held-out accuracy, per-class precision and recall, and the confusion matrix.
Reading a light curve
Anatomy of a folded light curve
A fold stacks every cycle onto one period. Watch the epochs fold, then follow one cycle through the star and the light curve together — or drag across the plot yourself.