Blazar AO 0235+164 optical brightening
ATel #6970; V. V. Vlasyuk, O. I. Spiridonova, A. S. Moskvitin (SAO RAS), V. S. Bychkova (Astro Space Center RAS)
on 20 Jan 2015; 23:03 UT
Credential Certification: Barsukova E.A. (bars@sao.ru)
Subjects: Optical, Blazar
We perform a multicolor optical monitoring of the blazar AO 0235+164 with the Zeiss-1000 telescope of SAO RAS since 2001. During this 14-year period we detected few extremally strong flares. At the beginning of 2015 the brightness of the blazar in BVRc bands started to rapidly increase. The last observations are presented in the following table.
Date (YYMMDD) | JD | B | V | R |
150114 | 2457037.192 | | | 17.26 +/- 0.03 |
150115 | 2457038.200 | | | 16.90 +/- 0.01 |
150117 | 2457040.178 | | | 17.23 +/- 0.02 |
150118 | 2457041.182 | | | 16.75 +/- 0.01 |
150119 | 2457042.220 | 17.80 +/- 0.01 | 16.58 +/- 0.01 | 16.03 +/- 0.01 |
150120 | 2457043.295 | | | 16.39 +/- 0.01 |
The colors of the object on 2015 Jan. 19 night was as following: B-V = +1.22, V-R = +0.55. In comparison with the quite state of the blazar on 2011 Aug. 27 we can not find any significant differences in the colors (B-V = +1.22, V-R = +0.53, R = 18.54 +/- 0.03). We strongly encourage multiwavelength observations of the flare.