The taiwanese-american occultation survey project stellar variability. II. Detection of 15 variable stars

Abstract

The Taiwanese-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) project has collected more than a billion photometric measurements since 2005 January. These sky survey data - covering timescales from a fraction of a second to a few hundred days - are a useful source to study stellar variability. A total of 167 star fields, mostly along the ecliptic plane, have been selected for photometric monitoring with the TAOS telescopes. This paper presents our initial analysis of a search for periodic variable stars from the time-series TAOS data on one particular TAOS field, No.151 (R.A. = 17h30m67, decl. = 27°17′30″, J2000), which had been observed over 47 epochs in 2005. A total of 81 candidate variables are identified in the 3 deg2 field, with magnitudes in the range 8 < R < 16. On the basis of the periodicity and shape of the light curves, 29 variables, 15 of which were previously unknown, are classified as RR Lyrae, Cepheid, δ Scuti, SX Phonencis, semi-regular, and eclipsing binaries. © 2010. The American Astronomical Society.