The future of massive variability searches

Abstract

This is a personal review of various issues related to massive photometric and astrometric searches. A complete inventory of variable stars down to almost any magnitude limit will improve our understanding of the stellar evolution and the galactic structure. A search for detached eclipsing binaries will improve the distance scale, the value of the Hubble constant, and the age of the oldest stars. A search for supernovae will help the determination of cosmological parameters Omega and Lambda. A search for microlensing events will provide insight into the stellar mass function, dark matter, and may lead to a discovery of earth-mass planets.

14 pages, 3 figures, latex, uses conf_iap.sty, invited talk at the 12th IAP Colloquium: Variable stars and the astrophysical returns of microlensing surveys, Paris, IAP, July 7-12, 1996