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Register a new userOptical Observations of Blazars: the Perugia Monitoring
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In eight years, during the blazar monitoring program performed with the Perugia automatic telescope, we were able to collect about 20000 $BVR_cI_c$ photometric points, contributing to get knowledge on the optical flux history of many sources brighter than magnitude $V=17.0$. This intensive and constant optical monitoring is essential to perform studies and multiwavelength campains about this class of AGN. We illustrate our program and some examples of data and preliminary results.
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The RoboPol program has been monitoring the $R$-band linear polarisation parameters of an unbiased sample of 60 gamma-ray-loud blazars and a control sample of 15 gamma-ray-quite ones. The prime drive for the program has been the systematic study of the temporal behaviour of the optical polarisation and particularly the potential association of smooth and long rotations of the polarisation angle with flaring activity at high energies. Here we present the program and discuss a list of selected topics from our studies of the first three observing seasons (2013--2015) both in the angle and in the amplitude domain.
After three years of polarimetric monitoring of blazars, the RoboPol project has uncovered several key characteristics of polarimetric rotations in the optical for these most variable sources. The most important of these is that polarization properties of the synchrotron emission in the optical appear to be directly linked with gamma-ray activity. In this paper, we discuss the evidence for this connection, as well as the broader features of polarimetric behavior in blazars that are key in making progress with theoretical modeling of blazar emission.
We present 10 years of R-band monitoring data of 31 northern blazars which were either detected at very high energy (VHE) gamma rays or listed as potential VHE gamma-ray emitters. The data comprise 11820 photometric data points in the R-band obtained in 2002-2012. We analyze the light curves by determining their power spectral density (PSD) slopes assuming a power-law dependence with a single slope $beta$ and a Gaussian probability density function (PDF). We use the multiple fragments variance function (MFVF) combined with a forward-casting approach and likelihood analysis to determine the slopes and perform extensive simulations to estimate the uncertainties of the derived slopes. We also look for periodic variations via Fourier analysis and quantify the false alarm probability through a large number of simulations. Comparing the obtained PSD slopes to values in the literature, we find the slopes in the radio band to be steeper than those in the optical and gamma rays. Our periodicity search yielded one target, Mrk 421, with a significant (p<5%) period. Finding one significant period among 31 targets is consistent with the expected false alarm rate, but the period found in Mrk~421 is very strong and deserves further consideration}.
We present the observational results of multi-colour optical monitoring of eight red blazars from 2003 September to 2004 February. The aim of our monitoring is to investigate the spectral variability as well as the flux variations at short and long time scales. The observations were carried out using the 1.0 m robotic telescope of Mt. Lemmon Optical Astronomy Observatory, in Arizona, USA, the 0.6 m telescope of Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory and the 1.8 m telescope of Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory, in the Republic of Korea. During the observations, all sources show strong flux variations with amplitudes of larger than 0.5 mag. Variations with amplitudes of over 1 mag are found in four sources. Intraday variations with amplitudes larger than 0.15 mag, and a rapid brightness increase with a rate of ~0.2 mag per day in four days, are detected in S5 0716+71. We investigate the relationship between the colour index and source brightness for each source. We find that two out of three FSRQs tend to be redder when they are brighter, and, conversely, all BL Lac objects tend to be bluer. In particular, we find a significant anti-correlation between the V-I colour index and R magnitude for 3C 454.3. This implies that the spectrum became steeper when the source was brighter, which is opposite to the common trend for blazars. In contrast, significant positive correlations are found in 3C 66A, S5 0716+71, and BL Lac. However, there are only very weak correlations for PKS 0735+17 and OJ 287. We propose that the different relative contributions of the thermal versus non-thermal radiation to the optical emission may be responsible for the different trends of the colour index with brightness in FSRQs and BL Lac objects.
We report results of multiband optical monitoring of two well known blazars, S5 0716+714 and BL Lacertae, carried out in 1996 and 2000-01 with an aim to study optical variations on time scales from minutes to hours and longer.The light curves were derived relative to comparison stars present on the CCD frames. Night to night flux variations of >0.1 mag were observed in S5 0716+714 during a campaign of ~2 weeks in 1996.A good correlation between the lightcurves in different optical bands was found for both inter-night and intra-night observations. Two prominent events of intra-night optical variability were detected in S5 0716+714.Each of these rapidly varying segments of the lightcurves trace an exponential flux profile whose rate of variation is the same in both cases. Our long-term monitoring data of S5 0716+714 showed a distinct flare around JD 2451875 which can be identified in the BVRI bands.This flare coincides with the brightest phase recorded during 1994-2001 in the long-term lightcurves reported by Raiteri et al.(2003). No evidence for the bluer when brighter trend was noticed on inter-night and intra-night time scales. On the other hand, our nearly simultaneous multiband observations of BL Lacertae in October 2001 showed flux variations that were not achromatic. This blazar was found to become bluer when brighter on intra-night time scales and there is a hint of the same trend on inter-night time scales. Based on five nights of observations during a week, BL Lacertae showed a peak night-to-night variability of ~0.6 mag in B. Thus, we found that the present observations of the two blazars, reveal a contrasting behaviour in terms of the dependence of spectral hardening with increasing brightness, at least on intra-night, and possibly also on inter-night, time scales.
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