Transcript: When Shakespeare talked about love that was as constant as the pole star he was taking artistic license. Polaris is in fact a variable star along with many other bright stars in the night sky. Chinese astronomers were the first to note systematic variations in stars visible to the naked eye. Modern astronomers using digital surveys and high quality detectors have cataloged hundreds of thousands of variable stars in at least twenty eight different types. There are stars that vary regularly or periodically and stars that flare up regularly. There are stars that vary with light intensity variations of only a few percent and some that vary by orders of magnitude in their brightness. Variable star science is complex and has led to many insights into the way that stars work.