Related papers: Structure function of the UV variability of Q0957+…
The stochastic photometric variability of quasars is known to follow a random-walk phenomenology on emission timescales of months to years. Some high-cadence restframe optical monitoring in the past has hinted at a suppression of…
In our second paper on long-term quasar variability, we employ a much larger database of quasars than in de Vries, Becker & White. This expanded sample, containing 35165 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 2, and 6413…
The variability of quasars across multiple wavelengths is a useful probe of physical conditions in active galactic nuclei. In particular, variable accretion rates, instabilities, and reverberation effects in the accretion disk of a…
We report on an observing campaign in March 2001 to monitor the brightness of the later arriving Q0957+561 B image in order to compare with the previously published brightness observations of the (first arriving) A image. The 12…
The measurement of continuum time lags in lensed quasars can effectively probe the accretion physics of quasars. This is because microlensing observations of lensed quasars can provide constraints on the half-light radii of quasar accretion…
Significant progress in the description of quasar variability has been recently made by employing SDSS and POSS data. Common to most studies is a fundamental assumption that photometric observations at two epochs for a large number of…
Quasars are variable and their variability can both constrain their physical properties and help to identify them. We look for ways to efficiently identify quasars exhibiting consistent variability over multi-year time-scales, based on a…
Using a sample of over 25000 spectroscopically confirmed quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we show how quasar variability in the rest frame optical/UV regime depends upon rest frame time lag, luminosity, rest wavelength, redshift,…
We extend the gr-band time coverage of the gravitationally lensed double quasar Q0957+561. New gr light curves permit us to detect significant intrinsic fluctuations, to determine new time delays, and thus to gain perspective on the…
We examine the nature of brightness fluctuations in the UV-Optical spectral region of an ordinary quasar with 881 optical brightness measurements made during the epoch 1993 - 1999. We find evidence for systematic trends having the character…
The optical/ultraviolet (UV) variability of quasars has been discovered to be correlated with other quasar properties, such as luminosity, black hole mass and rest-frame wavelength. However,the origin of variability has been a puzzle so…
Theoretical predictions for the ensemble quasar structure function are tested using multi-epoch observations of Stripe 82 collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We reanalyze the entire available volume of the g-band imaging data using…
The ensemble variability properties of nearly 23,000 quasars are studied using the Palomar-QUEST Survey. The survey has covered 15,000 square degrees multiple times over 3.5 years using 7 optical filters, and has been calibrated…
We study the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) variability (rest frame wavelengths 500 - 920 $\AA$) of high luminosity quasars using HST (low to intermediate redshift sample) and SDSS (high redshift sample) archives. The combined HST and SDSS data…
Reverberation mapping of nearby active galactic nuclei has led to estimates of broad-line-region (BLR) sizes and central-object masses for some 37 objects to date. However, successful reverberation mapping has yet to be performed for…
We have continued our effort to re-reduce archival Q0957+561 brightness monitoring data and present results for 1629 R-band images using the methods for galaxy subtraction and seeing correction reported previously. The new dataset comes…
Imaging and spectra of the lensed QSO pair 0957+561 are presented and discussed. The data are principally those from the STIS NUV MAMA, and cover rest wavelengths from 850A to 1350A. The QSOs are both extended over about 1 arcsec, with…
To go into the details about the variability of the double quasar SBS 0909+532, we designed a monitoring programme with the 2 m Liverpool Robotic Telescope in the r Sloan filter, spanning 1.5 years from 2005 January to 2006 June. The r-band…
Q0957+561 was the first discovered gravitationally lensed quasar. The mirage shows two images of a radio-loud quasar at redshift z = 1.41. The time lag between these two images is well established around one year. We detected a very…
Aperiodic optical variability is a common property of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs), though its physical origin is still open to question. To study the origin of the optical -- ultraviolet variability in AGN, we compare light curves of two…