The First MOTESS-GNAT Variable-Star Survey

Abstract

We present the results of the first MOTESS-GNAT variable-star survey, a deep, wide-field variability survey conducted over 2 yrwith a total sky coverage of 300 deg2. In this survey,we identified 26,042 variable-star candidates with magnitudes R ¼13 19, including 5271 that are periodic at the 99% confidence level.We recovered 59 out of 68 members of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS) that are in this brightness range.We discuss the im- plications for completeness and accuracy for both this survey and the GCVS; the implied completeness for distinctly classifiable variable stars in our survey is?85%–90%.We also discuss some of the caveats of our survey results.We conclude that this instrument design is ideal for an inexpensive, longitudinally distributed telescope network that could be used to study faint or rare transient phenomena in a previously unexplored regime of parameter space.