Nature of Intra-night Optical Variability of BL Lacertae
Abstract
We present the results of extensive multi-band intra-night optical monitoring of BL Lacertae during 2010--2012. BL Lacertae was very active in this period and showed intense variability in almost all wavelengths. We extensively observed it for a total for 38 nights; on 26 of them observations were done quasi-simultaneously in B, V, R and I bands (totaling 113 light curves), with an average sampling interval of around 8 minutes. BL Lacertae showed significant variations on hour-like timescales in a total of 19 nights in different optical bands. We did not find any evidence for periodicities or characteristic variability time-scales in the light curves. The intranight variability amplitude is generally greater at higher frequencies and decreases as the source flux increases. We found spectral variations in BL Lacertae in the sense that the optical spectrum becomes flatter as the flux increases but in several flaring states deviates from the linear trend suggesting different jet components contributing to the emission at different times.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1508.00953,
title = {Nature of Intra-night Optical Variability of BL Lacertae},
author = {Haritma Gaur and Alok C. Gupta and R. Bachev and A. Strigachev and E. Semkov and M. Bottcher and Paul J. Wiita and J. A. de Diego and Minfeng Gu and H. Guo and R. Joshi and B. Mihov and N. Palma and S. Peneva and A. Rajasingam and L. Slavcheva-Mihova},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.00953},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
12 Pages, 5 figures, 3 Tables, Accepted for Publication in MNRAS