THE ATCA VLA OH 1612 MHZ SURVEY .1. OBSERVATIONS OF THE GALACTIC BULGE REGION/

We present observations of the region between \e\ less than or equal t o 10 degrees and \b\ less than or equal to 3 degrees in the OH 1612.23 1 MHz line, taken in 1993 October and November with the Australia Tele scope Compact Array(1). The region was systematically searched for OH/ IR stars and was covered completely with 539 pointing centres separate d by 30'. The size of the dataset calls for a special reduction techni que that is fast, reliable and minimizes the output (positions and vel ocities of possible stars only). Having developed such a reduction met hod we found 307 OH masing objects, 145 of which are new detections. O ut of these, 248 have a standard double-peaked spectral profile, 55 a single-peaked profile and 4 have nonstandard or irregular profiles. In this article we analyse the data statistically and give classificatio ns and identifications with known sources where possible. The astrophy sical, kinematical, morphological and dynamical properties of subsets of the data will be addressed in future articles. These observations a re part of a larger survey, covering \e\ less than or equal to 45 degr ees and \b\ less than or equal to 3 degrees, with the Australia Telesc ope Compact Array and the Very Large Array. The electronic version of this paper, that includes table and spectra, can be obtainded from htt p://www.ed- phys.fr. The table is also available via anonymous ftp (13 0.79.128.5) or through the World Wide Web(http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/A bstract.html).