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M. E. Huber, S. Nikolaev, K. H. Cook (LLNL), A. Rest, C. Smith, K. Olsen, N. Suntzeff, C. Aguilera (CTIO/NOAO), C. Stubbs, A. Garg, P. Challis (Harvard), A. Becker, R. Covarrubias, A. Miceli (U. Washington), D. Welch (McMaster U.), G. Miknaitis (FNAL), J. L. Prieto (Ohio State), A. Clocchiatti, D. Minniti, L. Morelli (P. Univ. Catolica)
The SuperMACHO project, an NOAO survey, is in its 5th year of searching for microlensing toward the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using the CTIO 4m+MOSAIC (Rest et al. 2005, AJ, in press). The project samples 68 fields covering 24 square degrees over the LMC in a broad VR filter and reaches VR~23 with an uncertainty of 0.1 mag. Each field was imaged 20-30 times with a typical separation of 2 days over 3 months for the past 4 years. Image subtraction analysis is used to identify microlensing candidates and other variable sources in these crowded fields where more than 16 million difference image detections are found in the 2 TB of image data. With the difference image detections, we have built a prototype database in MySQL and created objects using simple clustering methods. A current total of 84,836 variable objects with light curves characterized by various statistics (e.g., period estimates by SuperSmoother, Fourier coefficients) are being investigated. In cross-matching to MACHO, 21,425 sources are re-confirmed as known variables, with the remaining being new and/or fainter detections. A large sample of Delta Scuti variables has been identified, extending beyond the MACHO set, providing a new catalog of good signal-to-noise light curves for analysis. Similarly, MACHO and SuperMACHO light curves for RR Lyrae have been compared to explore period and phase evolution behavior. The eclipsing binary catalog from MACHO is extended nearly 3 mag deeper. We will present a summary of these and other variable stars found in more detail.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.