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R.S. French, T.G. Barnes, T. Montemayor (Univ. of Texas at Austin & McDonald Obs.), I. Skillen (ING Astronomy Group)
Radial velocities of variable stars, in particular RR Lyraes and Cepheids, are of great astrophysical importance. Some years ago, we began a program designed to determine radial velocities of a number of these stars in support of surface brightness distance determinations. Here, we present the first results from this program in the form of radial velocities with a precision of approximately 1 km/s. Our high-resolution (R \approx 60,000) spectra cover the wavelength range from approximately 5600-6800 Å, and were taken using the Sandiford Cassegrain Echelle Spectrograph on the 2.1m Struve reflector at McDonald Observatory. The data span 42 nights between 16 August 1995 and 09 January 1998. Additionally, we hope to derive metallicities with precisions of 0.1 dex from these data via spectral synthesis techniques.