Blazar AO 0235+164 brightens in optical

Astronomer's Telegram #6414

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.