A&A 421, 509-518 (2004)
DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20035659

Variable stars towards the bulge of M 31: The AGAPE catalogue

R. Ansari¹, M. Aurière², P. Baillon³, A. Bouquet⁴, G. Coupinot², Ch. Coutures⁵, C. Ghesquière⁴, Y. Giraud-Héraud⁴, D. Gillieron², P. Gondolo⁶, J. Hecquet⁷, J. Kaplan⁴, A. Kim^{4, 8}, Y. Le Du⁴, A. L. Melchior⁹, M. Moniez¹, J. P. Picat⁷ and G. Soucail<sup>7

1</sup>  Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire, Université Paris-Sud, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
²  Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, unité associée au CNRS (UMR 5572), 57 Avenue d'Azereix, BP 826, 65008 Tarbes Cedex, France
³  CERN, 1211 Genève 23, Switzerland
⁴  Physique Corpusculaire et Cosmologie, Collège de France, laboratoire associé au CNRS-IN2P3 (UMR 7550), 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
⁵  DAPNIA/SPP, CEN Saclay, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁶  Department of Physics, University of Utah, 115 S 1400 E Rm 201, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0830, USA
⁷  Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, unité associée au CNRS (UMR 5572), 14 avenue Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
⁸  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
⁹  LERMA, Observatoire de Paris, 61 avenue de l'Observatoire, 75014 Paris, France

(Received 11 November 2003 / Accepted 23 March 2004 )

Abstract
We present the AGAPE astrometric and photometric catalogue of 1579 variable stars in a 14'  10' field centred on M 31. This work is the first survey devoted to variable stars in the bulge of M 31. The R magnitudes of the objects and the B-R colours suggest that our sample is dominated by red long-period variable stars (LPV), with a possible overlap with Cepheid-like type II stars. Fits of the light curves with sinusoids suggest that a large fraction of the stars correspond to periodic or semi-periodic objects with periods longer than 100 days. Twelve nova candidates are identified. Correlations with other catalogues suggest that 2 novae could be recurrent novae and provide possible optical counterparts for 2 supersoft X-ray sources candidates observed with Chandra.

Key words: galaxies: individual: M 31 -- cosmology: dark matter -- stars: variables: general -- stars: novae, cataclysmic variables -- stars: variables: Cepheids -- X-rays: stars

Offprint request: M. Aurière, michel.auriere@obs-mip.fr

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