SX Phe stars in Fornax. II.

Observations collected over three consecutive nights with the Wide Field Imager of the 2.2m MPI telescope at ESO allowed us to detect 85 high-amplitude (0.20-1.00mag in B light) variable stars with periods in the range from 0.046 to 0.126 days, similar to SX Phoenicis stars in Galactic metal-poor stellar populations.

The plots of the observed periods vs. the B and V magnitudes show a dispersion largely exceeding the observational errors. To disentangle the matter, we separated the first-overtone from the fundamental-mode pulsators and tentatively identified a group of subluminous variables, about 0.35mag fainter than the others. Their nature as either metal-poor intermediate-age stars or stars formed by the merging of close binary systems is discussed.