AGN Research Aids

AGN Movies

Here is a movie showing variations of the Hbeta profile in NGC 5548 between 1972 and 2001. Contaminating narrow lines (narrow Hbeta and [O III] 4959, 5007) have been removed. The data are mostly photographic spectra from Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (1972-1988) or CCD spectra from the International AGN Watch database. The data are described more completely in the paper "Thirty Years of Continuum and Emission-Line Variability in NGC 5548,'' by Sergeev, Doroshenko, Dzyuba, Peterson, Pogge, and Pronik (in preparation).
[NGC 5548 30-Year AVI] (12.3 Mb)

The movie below shows how an isodelay surface propagates through the broad-line region. The left panel shows the BLR as a disk. The black-hole/accretion-disk structure is the point at the center. The red line is an isodelay surface. The upper right panel shows a velocity-delay map, i.e., the BLR mapped into line-of-sight velocity/time-delay space. The horizontal red line is the map of the isodelay surface onto the velocity-delay map. The lower right panel is the line profile along the isodelay surface.
[Time Delay QuickTime Movie] (7.5 Mb)

AGN Light Curves

This page contains light curves from The Ohio State AGN Spectroscopic Monitoring Project (1988-1996). These are supplementary tables to the paper ``Optical Continuum and Emission-Line Variability of Seyfert 1 Galaxies'' by B.M. Peterson, I. Wanders, Ray Bertram, James F. Hunley, Richard W. Pogge, and R. Mark Wagner, The Astrophysical Journal, 501, 82.

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation through grant AST-9420080, and its predecessors, AST-8702691, AST-8915258, and AST-9117086.

Here is a finder chart for the comparison star sequence around NGC 5548, from Penston, Penston, and Sandage (1972, PASP, 83, 783), from the Palomar Sky Survey (© National Geographic Society - Palomar Observatory Sky Survey). North is up, east is to the left. The size of the field shown is approximately 24 arcminutes N-S and 20 arcminutes E-W.

finder chart

[OSU Astronomy Home Page] [Brad Peterson's Home Page]
Updated 3 July 2006
peterson@astronomy.ohio-state.edu