SIMBAD references

As the time-domain survey telescope of the highest survey power in the Northern Hemisphere currently, the Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST) is scheduled to hourly/daily/semiweekly scan the Northern sky up to ∼23 mag in four optical (ugri) bands. Unlike the observation cadences in forthcoming regular survey missions, WFST performed “staring” observations toward the Galactic plane in a cadence of ≈1 minute for a total on-source time of about 13 hr during the commissioning and pilot observation phases. Such an observation cadence is well applied in producing densely sampled light curves and hunting for stars exhibiting fast stellar variabilities. Here we introduce the primary methodologies in detecting variability, periodicity, and stellar flares among half a million sources from the minute-cadence observations, and present the WFST g/r-band light curves generated from periodic variable stars and flaring stars. Benefiting from the high photometric precisions and deep detection limits of WFST, the observations have captured several rare variable stars, such as a variable hot white dwarf (WD) and an ellipsoidal WD binary candidate. By surveying the almost unexplored parameter spaces for variables, WFST will lead to new opportunities in discovering unique variable stars in the Northern sky.