0000000000451794

AUTHOR

A. Sillanpää

The WEBT BL Lacertae Campaign 2001 and its extension : Optical light curves and colour analysis 1994–2002

BL Lacertae has been the target of four observing campaigns by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) collaboration. In this paper we present UBVRI light curves obtained by theWEBT from 1994 to 2002, including the last, extended BL Lac 2001 campaign. A total of about 7500 optical observations performed by 31 telescopes from Japan to Mexico have been collected, to be added to the ∼15 600 observations of the BL Lac Campaign 2000. All these data allow one to follow the source optical emission behaviour with unprecedented detail. The analysis of the colour indices reveals that the flux variability can be interpreted in terms of two components: longer-term variations occurring on a fewday time …

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Multiband variability studies and novel broadband SED modeling of Mrk 501 in 2009

Astronomy and astrophysics 603, A31 (2017). doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201629540

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First Multi-wavelength Campaign on the Gamma-ray-loud Active Galaxy IC 310

The extragalactic VHE gamma-ray sky is rich in blazars. These are jetted active galactic nuclei viewed at a small angle to the line-of-sight. Only a handful of objects viewed at a larger angle are known so far to emit above 100 GeV. Multi-wavelength studies of such objects up to the highest energies provide new insights into the particle and radiation processes of active galactic nuclei. We report the results from the first multi-wavelength campaign observing the TeV detected nucleus of the active galaxy IC 310, whose jet is observed at a moderate viewing angle of 10 deg - 20 deg. The multi-instrument campaign was conducted between 2012 Nov. and 2013 Jan., and involved observations with MAG…

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Black hole lightning due to particle acceleration at subhorizon scales

Supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses are commonly found in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers seek to image jet formation using radio interferometry, but still suffer from insufficient angular resolution. An alternative method to resolve small structures is to measure the time variability of their emission. Here, we report on gamma-ray observations of the radio galaxy IC 310 obtained with the MAGIC telescopes revealing variability with doubling time scales faster than 4.8 min. Causality constrains the size of the emission region to be smaller than 20\% of the gravitational radius of its central black hole. We suggest that the emission is associated …

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