An impressive number of publications
was started in 1918 by the Astronomische Gesellschaft (one of the predecessors
of the IAU) with this name to include
all known investigations about
variable stars at the time. In 1934 a second edition of this publication was
issued, containing five extensive volumes.
None of these publications can be
found in the scanned literature service of the NASA (see e.g. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/journals_service.html
and http://adsabs.harvard.edu/bulletins_service.html).
Because I use the references from
this source regularly and would like to offer them to other interested
investigators as well, I decided to scan all the copies that I have
and make them available on my
website. This publication is a bit different from a standard catalogue: there
is not just a table with the latest elements but there is a short review
of all available material for each
star.
Every volume consists of three parts
usually: Introduction, list of abbreviations and the index of variables. Sometimes
there are reviews of the current state of knowledge on
variable star classification at the
time. The 3rd volume of the first edition contains a catalogue of
all known variables at that moment.
Remarkable for this publication: ALL
dates/times are heliocentric, and ALL positions are for 1900.
The following bands have been
scanned for the above mentioned purposes:
GuL Erste
Ausgabe (first edition) Erster Band (1st volume) 1918 (published by Müller
and Hartwig)
GuL Erste
Ausgabe (first edition) Zweiter Band (2nd volume) 1920 (published by
Müller and Hartwig)
GuL Erste
Ausgabe (first edition) Dritter Band (3rd volume) 1922 (published by
Müller and Hartwig)
GuL
Zweite Ausgabe (second edition) Erster Band (1st volume) 1934 (published
by R. Prager)
GuL
Zweite Ausgabe (second edition) Zweiter Band (2nd volume) 1936
(published by R. Prager)
GuL
Zweite Ausgabe (second edition) Dritter Band (3rd volume) 1952
(published by H. Schneller)
GuL
Zweite Ausgabe (second edition) Vierter Band (4th volume) 1957
(published by H. Schneller)
The first edition was published by Müller and Hartwig in 1918, 1920 and
1922. Soon it was decided that the publication needed to be extended.
The second edition was started by
Richard Prager in Germany in the thirties, he was not able to finish his job
due to the war. In 1936 he was thrown out of the job
because he was Jewish. The German
obituary speaks euphemistically of an “early retirement” but in the English
obituary it is stated that he was thrown in prison
and fled to the UK and later to the US.
He was invited to continue his work in Harvard and therefore there is an issue
of the Harvard Annals number 111 from 1941
that is the continuation of his
work. He died in 1945 just after the war ended and before he could return to
Germany.
Please bear in mind that Harvard
Annals issue 111 is just as much part of this series of publications as the
above ones. But I did not include it here because
this publication was already
available in scanned format from the NASA site
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/iarticle_query?journal=AnHar&volume=0111&type=SCREEN_THMB
Thanks are due to Guus Gilein for
making his copy of the first edition available to me and reminding me the
website needed updating