Optical Flare of the Quasar 0420-014
ATel #14106; Svetlana Jorstad, Murdock Hart (IAR, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA), Evgenia Kopatskaya (St. Petersburg University, St. Petersburg, Russia)
on 21 Oct 2020; 00:37 UT
Credential Certification: Svetlana Jorstad (jorstad@bu.edu)
Subjects: Optical, Blazar
Referred to by ATel #: 15935
We monitor the quasar 0420-014 (z=0.915) within a sample of bright gamma-ray blazars at optical wavelengths. During the last 5 yr the quasar
was in a quiescent state at gamma-ray and optical bands (see our website indicated below), with the optical brightness in R band ~17-18 mag.
According to observations at the Boston University 1.8m Perkins telescope (Flagstaff, AZ) and 0.7m AZT-8 (Crimean Astrophysical Obs.) the quasar reached 15.25 mag in R band on
October 19 and 20. The quasar also shows a high degree of optical linear polarization, P=16.5+-0.5%. Multi-wavelength observations of the source are encouraged.
