ar X iv : a st ro - p h / 01 07 27 9 v 1 1 6 Ju l 2 00 1 DIRECT Distances to Nearby Galaxies Using Detached Eclipsing Binaries

DIRECT is a project to obtain directly 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 1m-class telescopes. In this eighth paper we present a catalog of variable stars discovered in the data from the followup observations of DEB system D33J013337. Observatory 2.1m telescope. In our search covering an area of 108 ′ 2 we have found 895 variable stars: 96 eclipsing binaries, 349 Cepheids, and 450 other periodic, possible long period or non-periodic variables. Of these variables 612 are newly discovered. Their light curves were extracted using the ISIS image subtraction package. For 77% of the variables we present light curves in standard V and B magnitudes, with the remaining 23% expressed in units of differential flux. We have discovered a population of first overtone Cepheid candidates and for six of them we present strong arguments in favor of this interpretation. The catalog of variables, as well as their photometry (about 9.2 × 10 4 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. Subject headings: binaries: eclipsing – Cepheids – distance scale – galaxies: individual (M33) – stars: variables: other 1 Based on observations obtained with the 2.1m telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.