Related papers: Optical Microvariability in Quasars: Spectral Vari…
The UV/optical variability of active galactic nuclei and quasars is useful for understanding the physics of the accretion disk and is gradually attributed to the stochastic fluctuations over the accretion disk. Quasars generally appear…
We quantify quasar color-variability using an unprecedented variability database - ugriz photometry of 9093 quasars from SDSS Stripe 82, observed over 8 years at ~60 epochs each. We confirm previous reports that quasars become bluer when…
Some different correlations between optical-UV variability and other quasar properties, such as luminosity, black hole mass and rest-frame wavelength, were discovered. The positive correlation between optical-UV variability amplitude and…
HQM is an optical broad-band photometric monitoring program carried out since Sept.~1988. Our main intention is to search for indications of microlensing in a sample of $\sim$\,100 selected quasars; however, we also want to study the…
We report initial results from the detection of optical emission in the arcsecond-scale radio jets of two quasars utilizing images from the {\it Hubble Space Telescope} archive. The optical emission has a very knotty appearance and is…
We select a sample of 10 radio-quiet quasars with confirmed intranight optical variability and with available X-ray data. We compare the variability properties and the broad band spectral constraints to the predictions of intranight…
We present multi-epoch optical spectroscopy of seven southern Fermi-monitored blazars from 2008 - 2013 using the Small and Medium Aperture Research Telescope System (SMARTS), with supplemental spectroscopy and polarization data from the…
The properties of radio galaxies and quasars with and without optical or X-ray jets are compared. The majority of jets from which high-frequency emission has been detected so far (13 with optical emission, 11 with X-rays, 13 with both) are…
We study the optical light curves - primarily probing the variable emission from the accretion disk - of ~ 900 extreme variability quasars (EVQs, with maximum flux variations more than 1 mag) over an observed-frame baseline of ~ 16 years…
We discuss morphological properties of the large-scale jets in powerful radio sources, which are now observed at radio, optical and X-ray frequencies, in order to determine the origin of their X-ray radiation and the nature of the particle…
Black holes of stellar mass and neutron stars in binary systems are first detected as hard X-ray sources using high-energy space telescopes. Relativistic jets in some of these compact sources are found by means of multiwavelength…
Variable accretion in young stellar objects reveals itself photometrically and spectroscopically over a continuum of timescales and amplitudes. Most dramatic are the large outbursts (e.g., FU Ori, V1647 Ori, and EX Lup type events), but…
Microlensing perturbations to the flux ratios of gravitationally lensed quasar images can vary with wavelength because of the chromatic dependence of the accretion disk's apparent size. Multiwavelength observations of microlensed quasars…
Although controversial, the scenario of microlensing as the dominant mechanism for the long-term optical variability of quasars does provide a natural explanation for both the statistical symmetry, achromaticity and lack of cosmological…
The physical mechanisms of the quasar ultraviolet (UV)-optical variability are not well understood despite the long history of observations. Recently, Dexter & Agol presented a model of quasar UV-optical variability, which assumes large…
We report the development of a new tool to determine the origin of quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in accretion disk systems. The technique uses the source energy spectrum and the energy dependence of the QPO fractional amplitude to…
We compare the microlensing-based continuum emission region size measurements in a sample of 15 gravitationally lensed quasars with estimates of luminosity-based thin disk sizes to constrain the temperature profile of the quasar continuum…
The uncertain origin of the recently-discovered `changing-looking' quasar phenomenon -- in which a luminous quasar dims significantly to a quiescent state in repeat spectroscopy over ~10 year timescales -- may present unexpected challenges…
Accretion disk models still do not provide a satisfactory explanation of the optical/ultraviolet continuum observed in Seyferts and quasars. Substantial theoretical progress has been made in understanding one aspect of the problem: the…
We review some techniques to study the nature and size of the optical continuum sources in multiple QSOs. We focus on the source originating the events with several months timescale (the rapid variability source) as well as the source that…