Blazar B2 1156+29 is in a flaring state in optical.
ATel #4051; S. Jorstad (Boston Univ., USA and St. Petersburg Univ., Russia), V. Larionov, D. Blinov, D. Morozova, E. Kopatskaya, T. Konstantinova, Yu. Pavlova, A. Mokrushina (St. Petersburg Univ.)
on 18 Apr 2012; 13:31 UT
Credential Certification: V. Larionov (vlar@astro.spbu.ru)
Subjects: AGN, Blazar, Quasar
We perform optical photometric and R-band polarimetric monitoring of FSRQ B2 1156+29 = 4C +29.45 = Ton 599 using 1.8-m Perkins telescope (Az,USA), 70-cm AZT-8 (CrAO, Ukraine) and 0.4-m LX-200 (St.Petersburg, Russia) telescopes, partly in the frames of GASP project. Our data show that starting from 2012 April 2 this blazar entered a phase of violent optical activity. In the night of 2012-04-11 its brightness reached R=15.1, as compared to R=16.6 in the night 2012-04-09. The quasar faded almost to usual level of R=16.7 in subsequent nights, and brightened again to R=15.5 in the night of 2012-04-18UT07:00, becoming 1 magnitude brighter than during previous night. Both optical brightening events were accompanied with increased level of linear polarization ~10%, as compared to usual level of 3-5%. We encourage multi-wavelength observations of B2 1156+29.
