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Description
We present results from daily radio continuum observations of the Bootes field as part of the Pi GHz Sky Survey (PiGSS). These results are part of a systematic and unbiased campaign to characterize variable and transient sources in the radio sky. The observations include 78 individual epochs distributed over five months at a radio frequency of 3.1GHz with a median rms image noise in each epoch of 2.8mJy. We produce five monthly images with a median rms of 0.6mJy. No transient radio sources are detected in the daily or monthly images. At 15mJy, we set an upper limit (2{sigma}) to the surface density of one-day radio transients at 0.025deg^-2^. At 5mJy, we set an upper limit (2{sigma}) to the surface density of one-month radio transients at 0.18deg^-2^. We also produce light curves for 425 sources and explore the variability properties of these sources. Approximately 20% of the sources exhibit some variability on daily and monthly timescales. The maximum rms fractional modulations on the one-day and one-month timescales for sources brighter than 10mJy are 2 and 0.5, respectively. The probability of a daily fluctuation for all sources and all epochs by a factor of 10 is less than 10^-4^. We compare the radio to mid-infrared variability for sources in the field and find no correlation. Finally, we apply the statistics of transient and variable populations to constrain models for a variety of source classes.
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