PHOTOMETRY OF VARIABLE STARS FROM THE THU-NAOC TRANSIENT SURVEY. I. THE FIRST TWO YEARS

In this paper, we report the detections of stellar variabilities from the first two years of observations of a sky area of about 1300 square degrees from the Tsinghua University-NAOC Transient Survey. A total of 1237 variable stars (including 299 new ones) were detected with a brightness <18.0 mag and a magnitude variation greater than or similar to 0.1 mag on a timescale from a few hours to a few hundred days. Among such detections, we tentatively identified 661 RR Lyrae stars, 431 binaries, 72 semi-regular pulsators, 29 Mira stars, 11 slow irregular variables, 11 RS Canum Venaticorum stars, 7 Gamma Doradus stars, 5 long-period variables, 3 W Virginis stars, 3 Delta Scuti stars, 2 Anomalous Cepheids, 1 Cepheid, and 1 nova-like star based on their time-series variability index Js and their phased diagrams. Moreover, we found that 14 RR Lyrae stars show the Blazhko effect and 67 contact eclipsing binaries exhibit the O'Connell effect. Since the period and amplitude of light variations of RR Lyrae variables depend on their chemical compositions, their photometric observations can be used to investigate the distribution of metallicity along the direction perpendicular to the Galactic disk. We find that the metallicity of RR Lyrae stars shows large scatter at regions closer to the Galactic plane (e.g., -3.0 < [Fe/H] < 0) but tends to converge at [Fe/H] similar to -1.7 at larger Galactic latitudes. This variation may be related to the fact that the RRAB Lyrae stars in the Galactic halo come from globular clusters with different metallicities and vertical distances, i.e., OoI and OoII populations, favoring the dual-halo model.