Optical microvariability of EGRET blazars

ROMERO, G. E.; CELLONE, S. A.; COMBI, J. A.; ANDRUCHOW, I.

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

The European Southern Observatory - EDP Sciences

Año: 2002 vol. 390 p. 431 - 438

0004-6361

We present results of a photometric CCD study of the incidence of microvariability in the optical emission of a sample of 20 blazars detected at gamma-ray energies by the EGRET instrument of the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory. We have observed strong outbursts in some sources, but many others displayed no significant variability on timescales of hours. The typical minimum timescale is found to be of ~ several hours, not tens of minutes as claimed by some authors. The duty cycle for optical intranight microvariations of gamma-ray blazars, as estimated from our observations, seems to be ~ 50%, lower than what is usually assumed. For night-to-night variations, instead, the duty cycle approaches that observed in radio-selected BL Lacs and flat-spectrum radio quasars (i.e. ~ 70%).