On-going optical activity of 3C 279

ATel #11354; David Reinhart, Jens Ledermann, Adrian Scherbantin, Michael Kopp, Sebastian Hienz, Christoph Schilling, Martin Feige, Christian Lorey (all FKG / Hans-Haffner-Sternwarte), Karl Mannheim (Universitaet Wuerzburg), Dominik Elsaesser (TU Dortmund)
on 25 Feb 2018; 09:02 UT
Credential Certification: Dominik Elsaesser (dominik.elsaesser@tu-dortmund.de)

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Regular photometric monitoring of the flat-spectrum radio quasar 3C 279 (FK5 coordinates: RA 12 56 11.167, DEC -05 47 21.52 (J2000); Redshift 0.5632 (Marziani et al. 1996, ApJS, 104, 37)) is done as part of the long-term AGN monitoring program of the Naturwissenschaftliches Labor fuer Schueler am Friedrich-Koenig-Gymnasium (FKG) and the Universitaet Wuerzburg with the 0.5m telescope at the Hans-Haffner-Sternwarte in Hettstadt (Germany).

We here report on the on-going optical activity of this source in the time period from February 13th, 2018 to February 24th, 2018:

R - band magnitudes:

JD 2458162.5117: 14.99 +/- 0.16
JD 2458164.4672: 14.79 +/- 0.13
JD 2458167.5284: 15.10 +/- 0.14
JD 2458173.5232: 14.26 +/- 0.08
JD 2458174.4361: 14.65 +/- 0.15

V - band magnitudes:

JD 2458162.5152: 15.47 +/- 0.21
JD 2458164.4735: 15.24 +/- 0.17
JD 2458167.5347: 15.61 +/- 0.18
JD 2458173.5265: 14.70 +/- 0.10
JD 2458174.4424: 15.04 +/- 0.02

B - band magnitudes:

JD 2458162.5170: 15.92 +/- 0.62
JD 2458163.5920: 15.83 +/- 0.26
JD 2458167.5379: 16.18 +/- 0.62
JD 2458173.5298: 15.21 +/- 0.32

This corresponds to the previously reported active state of the source (ATELs #11190, #11196, #11202, #11216) and indicates the activity is on-going. We plan to continue monitoring of the source and encourage multi-wavelength observations.

Hans-Haffner-Sternwarte Hettstadt (optical and radio observatory)