Mt. Suhora M dwarf survey - Detection of eight short-period variable stars

TL;DR

This study reports the discovery of eight new short-period variable stars, including δ Scuti and RR Lyrae types, from the Mt. Suhora M dwarf survey, enhancing understanding of stellar variability in field stars.

Contribution

The paper presents the first results of a survey detecting eight new short-period variable stars, with spectroscopic classification confirming their types.

Findings

Eight new variable stars identified, including five δ Scuti and three RR Lyrae.

Spectroscopic observations confirmed the spectral types and luminosity classes.

The survey also checked hundreds of field stars for variability.

Abstract

The Mt. Suhora M\,dwarf survey searching for pulsations in low mass main sequence stars has acquired CCD photometry of 46 M\,dwarf stars during the first year of the project (Baran et al 2011). As a by-product of this search hundreds field stars have been checked for variability. This paper presents our initial result of a search for periodic variables in field stars observed in the course of the survey. On the basis of the periodicity and the shape of the light curves, eight new variables has been detected, among which five are $\delta$ Scuti stars and three likely RR Lyrae stars. Although variation in one of the stars has been previously detected, it was classified incorrectly. To support our classification, in August 2010, we performed spectroscopic observations to derive spectral types and luminosity classes for all eight variable stars.