The telescope, camera, telescope operations and data reduction are as described in Palanque-Delabrouille et al. (1998), hereafter SM98, and references therein. Since July 1996, 10 one-square-degree fields have been monitored towards the SMC. The first 5 years of data from 8.6 square degrees spread over these 10 fields have been analyzed. The data set contains about 5.2 million pairs of light curves in two wide pass bands called thereafter "red'' and "blue'', sampled on average once every 2.5 days from end-April to mid-March when the SMC is visible. About 400-500 images of each field were taken, with exposure times ranging from 5 min in the center of the SMC to 15 min in the outermost region.
Copyright ESO 2003