THE TAIWAN-AMERICAN OCCULTATION SURVEY PROJECT STELLAR VARIABILITY. I. DETECTIONOF LOW-AMPLITUDE 6 SCUTI STARS

摘要

We analyzed data accumulated during 2005 and 2006 by the Taiwan-American Occultation Survey (TAOS) inorder to detect short-period variable stars (periods of <1 hr) such as 3 Scuti. TAOS is designed for the detection ofstellar occultation by small-size Kuiper Belt Objects and is operating four 50 cm telescopes at an effective cadenceof 5 Hz. The four telescopes simultaneously monitor the same patch of the sky in order to reduce false positives.To detect short-period variables, we used the fast Fourier transform algorithm (FFT) in as much as the data pointsin TAOS light curves are evenly spaced. Using FFT, we found 41 short-period variables with amplitudes smallerthan a few hundredths of a magnitude and periods of about an hour, which suggest that they are low-amplitude3 Scuti stars. The light curves of TAOS 3 Scuti stars are accessible online at the Time Series Center Web site(http://timemachine.iic.harvard.edu).