Medicina 32m radio telescope observations of BL Lacertae
ATel #15705; Nicola Marchili, Simona Righini, Marcello Giroletti (INAF Istituto di Radioastronomia)
on 21 Oct 2022; 06:24 UT
Credential Certification: Marcello Giroletti (giroletti@ira.inaf.it)
Subjects: Radio, AGN, Blazar
On October 18th 2022 (MJD 59871) we performed radio observations, at 24 and 8 GHz, of the blazar BL Lacertae, which has been recently reported as extremely bright both in the optical (ATel #15684) and in the gamma-ray band (ATel #15688). The observations have been carried out with the 32m Medicina Radio Telescope, operated by INAF. We measured a flux density of 4.35+-0.08 Jy at 8.3 GHz, and of 6.30+-0.15 Jy at 24.1 GHz. These values are substantially in agreement with the average ones we measured for BL Lacertae in the last year during our monthly monitoring program. They are very high, instead, compared to the ones that characterised BL Lacertae between 2015 and 2020 (with average values of ~2.4 and 2.5 Jy at 8.3 and 24.1 GHz, respectively). This seems to suggest that the current outburst, which started a few days ago at higher frequencies, still did not reach the radio bands; it may be connected, though, to a long-lasting, strong activity phase of the source, which started in 2021 (see ATels #14330, #14583 and #14777) and is still ongoing.
