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Chandra Variable Guide Star Catalog

Metadata Updated: September 19, 2025

Variable stars have been identified among the optical-wavelength light curves of guide stars used for pointing control of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The authors present a catalog of these variable stars along with their light curves and ancillary data. Variability was detected to a lower limit of 0.02 mag amplitude in the 4000-10000 Angstroms range using the photometrically stable Aspect Camera on board the Chandra spacecraft. The Chandra Variable Guide Star Catalog (VGUIDE) contains 827 stars, of which 586 are classified as definitely variable and 241 are identified as possibly variable. Of the 586 definite variable stars, the authors believe 319 are new variable star identifications. Types of variables in the catalog include eclipsing binaries, pulsating stars, and rotating stars. The variability was detected during the course of normal verification of each Chandra pointing and results from analysis of over 75,000 guide star light curves from the Chandra mission. The VGUIDE catalog represents data from only about 9 years of the Chandra mission. Future releases of VGUIDE will include newly identified variable guide stars as the mission proceeds. An important advantage of the use of space data to identify and analyze variable stars is the relatively long observations that are available. The Chandra orbit allows for observations up to 2 days in length. Also, guide stars were often used multiple times for Chandra observations, so many of the stars in the VGUIDE catalog have multiple light curves available from various times in the mission. The catalog is presented as both online data associated with this paper (from which this HEASARC representation was created) and as a public Web interface at <a href="http://cxc.harvard.edu/vguide/">http://cxc.harvard.edu/vguide/</a>;. Light curves with data at the instrumental time resolution of about 2 s, overplotted with the data binned at 1 ks, can be viewed on the above-mentioned public Web interface and downloaded for further analysis. (This HEASARC Browse table also contains links to these light curves). VGUIDE is a unique project using data collected during the mission that would otherwise be ignored. The stars available for use as Chandra guide stars are generally 6-11 magnitudes and are commonly spectral types A and later. Due to the selection of guide stars entirely for positional convenience, this catalog avoids the possible bias of searching for variability in objects where it is to be expected. Statistics of variability compared to spectral type indicate the expected dominance of A-F stars as pulsators. Eclipsing binaries are consistently 20%-30% of the detected var iables across all spectral types. This table was created by the HEASARC in July 2010 based on the electronic version of Table 4 from the paper which was obtained from the Astrophysical Journal web site. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 19, 2025
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/chanvguide
Data Last Modified 2025-09-10
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id d1b5060c-4d51-4b05-93a8-baf8195e2020
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/all/chanvguide.html
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash c7c1f726d4b4be3e0588715ccbeeb3374d97da0383cf3e021da3e80b8e9cca7f
Source Schema Version 1.1

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