The Power of Archival Astronomy

 

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David G. Turner

Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 3C3, Canada

 

Presented at the 91st Annual Meeting of the AAVSO, October 26, 2002

 

Abstract  Examples are given of the extreme usefulness of the Harvard College Observatory Photographic Plate Collection for the study of variable stars that possess only limited published observational data. Program objects studied with the aid of archival photographic data include: (i) the eclipsing binary HD 174403, (ii) the semiregular variable BC Cygni, (iii) V439 Cygni, now recognized as a g Cassiopeiae variable, and (iv) the classical Cepheid T Antliae. In the case of T Antliae, the plate archives yielded not only data for the star’s brightness variations but also for the spectral characteristics of all stars brighter than B = 12 in the field.

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