Variable stars photometry from Dome A

We present high-cadence time-series aperture photometry of 10000 stars with i<14.5mag located in a 23deg^2^ region centered on the south celestial pole. The photometry was obtained with one of the CSTAR telescopes during 128 days of the 2008 Antarctic winter.

We used this photometric data set to derive site statistics for Dome A and to search for variable stars. Thanks to the nearly uninterrupted synoptic coverage, we found six times as many variables as previous surveys with similar magnitude limits. We detected 157 variable stars, of which 55% were unclassified, 27% were likely binaries, and 17% were likely pulsating stars.