Preface: Modern studies of variable stars

Abstract

In this Mini-Volume, seven papers written on the basis of talks selected from those presented at the scientific conference “Modern studies of variable stars,” commemorating Prof. M. A. Svechnikov (1933–2011), are published. The conference covered a variety of variable-star topics; the papers in this Mini-Volume deal with close, mainly eclipsing, binaries, Herbig Be stars and stellar molecular masers, with an accent on stellar catalogs of different kinds.We briefly review the contents of these papers.