ABSTRACT. We present the results of the first MOTESS-GNAT variable-star survey, a deep, wide-field variability survey conducted over 2 yr with a total sky coverage of 300 deg². In this survey, we identified 26,042 variable-star candidates with magnitudes R = 13-19, 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 implications 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.

Key words: binaries: eclipsing; catalogs; stars: variables: other; surveys; techniques: photometric

⁵ The National Solar Observatory and National Optical Astronomical Observatory are each operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.

Print publication: Issue 4 (2007 October)
Received 2006 November 6, accepted for publication 2007 June 24
Published 2007 August 17