THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT

doi:10.1088/0067-0049/185/1/156

THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: PHOTOMETRIC LIGHT CURVES AND OPTICAL VARIABILITY CHARACTERISTICS

Jonelle L. Walsh et al 2009 ApJS 185 156-170 doi: 10.1088/0067-0049/185/1/156

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Jonelle L. Walsh¹, Takeo Minezaki², Misty C. Bentz^1,15, Aaron J. Barth¹, Nairn Baliber^3,4, Weidong Li⁵, Daniel Stern⁶, Vardha Nicola Bennert³, Timothy M. Brown⁴, Gabriela Canalizo^7,8, Alexei V. Filippenko⁵, Elinor L. Gates⁹, Jenny E. Greene^10,15, Matthew A. Malkan¹¹, Yu Sakata^2,12, Rachel A. Street^3,4, Tommaso Treu^3,16, Jong-Hak Woo^11,14,15 and Yuzuru Yoshii^2,13
¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Irvine, 4129 Frederick Reines Hall, Irvine, CA 92697-4574, USA
² Institute of Astronomy, School of Science, University of Tokyo, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0015, Japan
³ Physics Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA
⁴ Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, 6740 Cortona Dr. Ste. 102, Goleta, CA 93117, USA
⁵ Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411, USA
⁶ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, MS 169-527, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA
⁷ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
⁸ Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
⁹ Lick Observatory, P.O. Box 85, Mount Hamilton, CA 95140, USA
¹⁰ Princeton University Observatory, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
¹¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA
¹² Department of Astronomy, School of Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
¹³ Research Center for the Early Universe, School of Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
¹⁴ Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University, Gwanak-gu, Seoul 151-742, Republic of Korea
¹⁵ Hubble Fellow
¹⁶ Sloan Fellow, Packard Fellow
E-mail: jlwalsh@uci.edu

ABSTRACT. The Lick AGN Monitoring Project targeted 13 nearby Seyfert 1 galaxies with the intent of measuring the masses of their central black holes using reverberation mapping. The sample includes 12 galaxies selected to have black holes with masses roughly in the range 10⁶-10⁷ M , as well as the well-studied active galactic nucleus (AGN) NGC 5548. In conjunction with a spectroscopic monitoring campaign, we obtained broadband B and V images on most nights from 2008 February through 2008 May. The imaging observations were carried out by four telescopes: the 0.76 m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, the 2 m Multicolor Active Galactic Nuclei Monitoring telescope, the Palomar 60 inch (1.5 m) telescope, and the 0.80 m Tenagra II telescope. Having well-sampled light curves over the course of a few months is useful for obtaining the broad-line reverberation lag and black hole mass, and also allows us to examine the characteristics of the continuum variability. In this paper, we discuss the observational methods and the photometric measurements, and present the AGN continuum light curves. We measure various variability characteristics of each of the light curves. We do not detect any evidence for a time lag between the B- and V-band variations, and we do not find significant color variations for the AGNs in our sample.

Key words: galaxies: active; galaxies: nuclei; galaxies: Seyfert

Print publication: Issue 1 (2009 November)
Received 2009 June 24, accepted for publication 2009 September 25
Published 2009 October 22

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THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: PHOTOMETRIC LIGHT CURVES AND OPTICAL VARIABILITY CHARACTERISTICS

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