Blazar AO 0235+164 brightens in optical
V. M. Larionov (Astron. Inst. of St. Petersburg Univ.), G. A. Borman (Crimean Astrophysical Observatory), S. G. Jorstad (Boston Univ. and St. Petersburg Univ.)
on 24 Aug 2014; 09:38 UT
We perform optical photometric and polarimetric monitoring of selected gamma-ray blazars using 0.7-m AZT-8 telescope (Crimean Obs.,, Russia), LX-200 0.4-m telescope (St.Petersburg Univ., Russia) (see) and 1.8-m Perkins telescope (Lowell Obs., AZ, USA) (here), partly in the frames of WEBT/GASP project. Our recent observations of AO 0235+164 showed that this well-known blazar entered a phase of high activity, reaching R=16.6 in the night of 2014 Aug.24 (JD2456893.847), as compared to the quiescence level R~18-19 mag of previous seasons. The degree of polarization varies between 35% and 13% on the nightly scale.