ESA's Gaia mission has catalogued nearly 12 million variable stars, published in 2022 through Gaia Data Realease 3 (Gaia DR3). The database includes the variability type of each star and a calculated period for millions of them.
This catalogue has important implications for amateur astronomers interested in discovering new variables, because it makes the task of searching for and finding new variables tremendously complicated, as one has to see what the Gaia mission has not been able to see.
Finding a new variable that is not in the 12 million is now a challenge, but it is not impossible. I present in this blog entry the discovery of two variables, approved by the AAVSO.
The first is an EA variable, discovered in January 2024:
La segunda es una variable de tipo DSCT, descubierta en febrero del 2024. Esta segunda variable es especialmente difícil por lo débil (aproximadamente magnitud 19 en V) y por el pequeño rango de variabilidad, de solo 4 centésimas.
In both cases, for the variability cataloguing and period calculation, my own measurements have been combined with those of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a telescope of approximately 1.2m on Mount Palomar.