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R. B. Culver (Colorado State University/GNAT), E. R. Craine (GNAT/WRC), A. L. Kraus (CalTech/GNAT), M. S. Giampapa (NSO/NOAO), R. A. Tucker (G-P Obs/GNAT)
The Moving Object and Transient Event Search System (MOTESS) is a triplet of scan-mode telescopes located in Tucson, Arizona, and devised originally for high efficiency, unfiltered astrometric asteroid searches. Recently, the hardware system has been adopted by the Global Network of Astronomical Telescopes, Inc. (GNAT), as a prototype for a much expanded network of longitudinally distributed telescopes operating primarily as a high efficiency, high time frequency photometric survey system. The original MOTESS asteroid survey was operated for just over two years at a declination of +03\arcdeg 18m 20s. We developed a photometric data reduction pipeline to process the extensive archive of deep, unfiltered digital images. As a result, we now have two years of open channel photometry for about 2.1 million stars, of which some 35,000 are identified as likely variable star candidates. Of those 35,000, only ~ 200 are cataloged in the General Catalogue of Variable Stars (GCVS). Our primary purpose has been to use this survey, which we call the MG1 Survey, as a proof-of-principle test-bed of our data reduction system. In the process, our work has serendipitously yielded an enormous amount of useful data, including tens of thousands of new variable star discoveries. In this presentation, we discuss specifically our efforts to characterize the highest amplitude variables in the MG1 Variable Star Catalog.
This work has been supported in part by Walker & Company.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.