AAS 201st Meeting, January, 2003
Session 86. Radio Galaxies and Jets
Poster, Wednesday, January 8, 2003, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall AB

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[86.08] Where the Action is in Blazar Jets: Multifrequency Monitoring and VLBA Imaging of 3C 273, 3C 279, PKS 1510-089, and BL Lac

A.P. Marscher, S.G. Jorstad (Boston U.), I.M. McHardy (U. Southampton), M.F. Aller (U. Michigan), T.J. Balonek (Colgate U.), A.S. Sokolov (Boston U.)

We report on long-term light curves of several blazars obtained with RXTE and various radio and optical/near-IR telescopes. We have been monitoring the quasars 3C~279 and PKS~1510-089 with RXTE since late 1996 (with a 1.2-year gap for the former and sun-avoidance gaps for both) and 3C~273 since March 2001. In addition, we observed BL Lac weekly in 1999 and 3 times per week in 2000. Our detailed light curves reveal multiple X-ray flares that are usually correlated with optical/near-IR flares as well as with the ejection of superluminal radio knots as observed by multi-epoch VLBA observations at 43 GHz.

At the meeting, we will present light curves including (1) current RXTE data, (2) older RXTE data that have been reprocessed with the latest background models and instrumental response matrices, (3) sequences of VLBA images, (4) new optical/near-IR data, and (5) 7-10 day intervals of intensive (several times per day) monitoring of the 3 quasars. In addition, we will discuss briefly the analysis and interpretation of the multifrequency correlations and time lags that we have uncovered.

This work is supported in part by NASA grant NAG5-11811 and National Science Foundation grants AST-0098579 (to Boston U.) and AST-9900723 (to U. Michigan) and by the U. Michigan Dept. of Astronomy.


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