A search for period changes in δ Scuti stars with the super-LOTIS sky patrol system

We have observed a sample of δ Scuti stars discovered by the ROTSE collaboration in 1999 with Super-LOTIS in order to characterize changes in their pulsation periods over a time baseline of roughly three years. Achieving these goals required the creation of an automated astrometric and photometric data reduction pipeline for the Super-LOTIS camera. Applying this pipeline to data from a June 2002 observing campaign, we detect pulsations in 18 objects, and find that in two cases the periods have changed significantly over the three years between the ROTSE and Super-LOTIS observations. Since theory predicts the evolutionary period changes should be quite small, sources of non-evolutionary period changes due to the interactions of pulsations modes are discussed.