The Araucaria project. Bright variable stars in NGC 6822 from a wide-field imaging survey

Abstract

We have performed a search for variable stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 using wide-field multi-epoch VI photometry down to a limiting magnitude $V$ $\sim$ 22. Apart from the Cepheid variables in this galaxy already reported in an earlier paper by Pietrzynski et al. (2004), we have found 1019 variable stars, 50 periodically variable stars with periods ranging from 0.12 to 66 days and 146 probably periodic variables. Twelve of these stars are eclipsing binaries and fifteen are likely new, low-amplitude Cepheids. Interestingly, seven of these Cepheid candidates have periods longer than 100 days, have very low amplitudes (less than 0.2 mag in $I$), and are very red. They could be young, massive Cepheids still embedded in dusty envelopes. The other objects span a huge range in colours and represent a mixture of different types of luminous variables. Many of the variables classified as non-periodic in the present study may turn out to be {\it periodic} variables once a much longer time baseline will be available to study them. We provide the catalogue of photometric parameters and show the atlas of light curves for the new variable stars. Our present catalogue is complementary to the one of Baldacci et al. (2005) which has focussed on very short-period and fainter variables in a subfield in NGC 6822.