HAT Discovery of 76 Bright Periodic Variable Stars Toward the Galactic Bulge

We report on photometric I-band observations of 147 bright periodic variable stars toward the Galactic bulge including 76 new discoveries. We used one of the HATnet telescopes to obtain 151 exposures spanning 88 nights in 2005 of an 8.4°×8.4° field of view (FOV) approximately centered on (l,b)=(1.73,-4.68). We observed the Galactic bulge in 2005 as part of a microlensing feasibility study, and here we discuss the periodic variable stars we found in our data. Among our discoveries we count 52 new eclipsing binaries and 24 other periodic variable stars.