D33 J013340.7+304543.1 , the SIMBAD biblio

DIRECT is a project to directly obtain the distances to two Local Group galaxies, M31 and M33, which occupy a crucial position near the bottom of the cosmological distance ladder. As the first step of the DIRECT project, we have searched for detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) and new Cepheids in the M31 and M33 galaxies with 1 m class telescopes. In this paper, we present a catalog of variable stars discovered in the data from the follow-up observations of the DEB system D33J013346.2+304439.9 in field M33A (α=23°.55, δ=30°.72; J2000.0), collected with the Kitt Peak National Observatory's 2.1 m telescope. In our search covering an area of 108 arcmin², we have found 434 variable stars: 63 eclipsing binaries, 305 Cepheids, and 66 other periodic, possible long-period, or nonperiodic variables. Of these variables, 280 are newly discovered, mainly short-period and/or faint Cepheids. Their light curves were extracted using the ISIS image subtraction package. For 85% of the variables, we present light curves in standard V and B magnitudes, with the remaining 15% expressed in units of differential flux. We have discovered a population of first-overtone Cepheid candidates, and for eight of them we present strong arguments in favor of this interpretation. We also report on the detection of a nonlinearity in the KPNO T2KA and T1KA cameras. The catalog of variables, as well as their photometry (∼7.8x10⁴ BV measurements) and finding charts, is available electronically via anonymous ftp and the World Wide Web. The complete set of the CCD frames is available upon request.