Related papers: Precursor flares in OJ 287
Relativistic plasma jets are observed in many accreting black holes. According to theory, coiled magnetic fields close to the black hole accelerate and collimate the plasma, leading to a jet being launched. Isolating emission from this…
The first directly detected gravitational waves (GW 150914) were emitted by two coalescing black holes (BHs) with masses of ~36Msun and ~29Msun. Several scenarios have been proposed to put this detection into an astrophysical context. The…
The blazar AO 0235+164 is a key source for studying the interplay between multi-wavelength variability in its light curves and changes in the position angles and apparent velocities of its parsec-scale jet components. In this work, we…
Swift J1357.2-0933 is a black hole transient of particular interest due to the optical, recurrent dips found during its first two outbursts (in 2011 and 2017), with no obvious X-ray equivalent. We present fast optical photometry during its…
As the brightest Gamma-Ray burst (GRB) ever detected, GRB 221009A may offer a chance that reveals some interesting features which are hidden in those bursts that are not so bright. There seems a very weak emission with a flux of…
(Abridged) OJ287 is a BL Lac object that has shown double-peaked bursts at regular intervals of ~12 yr during the last ~40 yr. We analyse optical photopolarimetric monitoring data from 2005-2009, during which the latest double-peaked…
Long-term \textit{Fermi}-LAT monitoring makes it possible to ask whether a blazar light curve shows signs of an upcoming flare before the flare becomes obvious in the $\gamma$-ray emission. We present a strictly causal machine-learning…
We analyze in detail the spin precession equations in binary black hole systems, when the tidal torque on a Kerr black hole due to quadrupole-monopole coupling is taken into account. We show that completing the precession equations with…
Superluminal motion has been interpreted as relativistically moving out flow. The increasing observations of such sources provide chance to investigate their mechanism in detail. This paper proposes that superluminal motion may be jet…
The unluckiest star orbits a supermassive black hole elliptically. Every time it reaches the pericenter, it shallowly enters the tidal radius and gets partially tidal disrupted, producing a series of flares. Confirmation of a repeated…
The latest binary black hole population estimates argue for a subpopulation of unequal component mass binaries with spins that are likely small but isotropically distributed. This implies a non-zero probability of detecting spin-induced…
A well-known active galaxy of the blazar type, S5 0716+714, is characterized by a particularly high variability duty cycle on short-time scales at optical frequencies. As such, the source was subjected to numerous monitoring programs,…
On September 18, 2022, an alert by ceCube indicated that a ~170TeV neutrino arrived in directional coincidence with the blazar TXS 0506+056. This event adds to two previous ones: a neutrino alert from its direction on September 22, 2017,…
We report results from our ongoing project MOMO (Multiwavelength Observations and Modelling of OJ 287). In this latest publication of a sequence, we combine our Swift UVOT--XRT and Effelsberg radio data (2.6-44 GHz) between 2019 and 2022.04…
The disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole generates a sudden bright flare. Previous studies have focused on the disruption by single black holes, for which the fallback rate decays as~$\propto t^{-5/3}$. In this paper, we…
We compute the gravitational radiation of the supermassive binary black hole OJ287. By fitting the data of its recent seven outbursts, we obtain the orbital motion up to 3.5PN (Post-Newtonian) order, the energy and angular momentum fluxes…
The double pulsar PSR J0737-3039A/B consists of two neutron stars in a highly relativistic orbit that displays a roughly 30-second eclipse when pulsar A passes behind pulsar B. Describing this eclipse of pulsar A as due to absorption…
In October 2024, the object BL Lacertae experienced the brightest flaring event in gamma-ray ($>$100 MeV) with a historically bright $\gamma$-ray flux of $\sim$2.59 $\times 10^{-5}$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ with a detection of a 175.7 GeV…
We report the finding of an unusual, weak precursor to a thermonuclear X-ray burst from the accreting millisecond pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658. The burst in question was observed on Oct. 19, 2002 with the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE)…
The peculiar QSO J0927+2943 shows multiple sets of emission lines in its optical spectrum. This signature has been interpreted as the relative motion between a black hole, either recoiling or bound in a binary system, and its host galaxy,…