Variable stars and planetary transit search in super metal-rich open clusters

This PhD thesis presents the analysis of a large sample of photometric data relative to the super metal-rich open clusters NGC6791 and NGC6253. The main goal of the surveys was the search for extrasolar planets using the transits method. I contributed to the extrasolar planet search by making numerical simulations in order to estimate the number of expected transiting planets. Moreover I analyzed the entire sample of light curves in order to find variable stars. I discovered 260 new variable stars in the field of NGC6791 and 597 in the field of NGC6253. The classification of all variables is presented and discussed in this work.