A catalog and atlas of cataclysmic variables

Abstract

The General Catalogue of Variable Stars contains information necessary for obtaining observations of variable stars, and in particular, cataclysmic variables. However, the coordinates presented are not accurate enough for observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope, and the references to finding charts are often to journals not easily accessible to some astronomers. We have therefore created a catalog of all cataclysmic variables (known to us as of February 1992) which contains coordinates (measured in the reference frame of the Hubble Space Telescope Guide Star Survey for the nonnovae, and obtained from the literature for the novae), the variability type, the magnitude range, and references to both finding charts and spectroscopy. The atlas contains finding charts for the dwarf novae, novalike variables, and objects classified only as cataclysmic variables, for which we could obtain valid identifications; a similar catalog and atlas for novae has been published by Duerbeck (1987).