Problems encountered in the Hipparcos variable stars analysis

Abstract

Among the 17 volumes of results from the Hipparcos space mission, two are dedicated to variable stars. These two volumes arose from the work of two groups, one at the Geneva Observatory and one at RGO (Royal Greenwich Observatory), on the 13 million photometric measurements produced by the satellite for 118204 stars. The analysis of photometric time series permitted us to identify several instrumental and mathematical problems: overestimation of the precision, offsets in the zero-points depending on the field of view, mispointing effects, image superpositions, trends in the magnitudes, binarity effects (spurious periods and amplitudes) and time-sampling effects. In this article we summarize some of the problems encountered by the Geneva group.