The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping Project: Photometric g and i Light Curves
astro-ph.GA
/ Authors
K. Kinemuchi, Patrick B. Hall, Ian McGreer, C. S. Kochanek, Catherine J. Grier, Jonathan Trump, Yue Shen, W. N. Brandt, W. M. Wood-Vasey, Xiaohui Fan
and 21 more authors
Bradley M. Peterson, Donald P. Schneider, Juan V. Hernandez Santisteban, Keith Horne, Yuguang Chen, Sarah Eftekharzadeh, Yucheng Guo, Siyao Jia, Feng Li, Zefeng Li, Jundan Nie, Kara A. Ponder, Jesse Rogerson, Tianmen Zhang, Hu Zou, Linhua Jiang, Luis C. Ho, Jean-Paul Kneib, Patrick Petitjean, Nathalie Palanque-Delabrouille, Christopher Yeche
/ Abstract
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Reverberation Mapping (SDSS-RM) program monitors 849 active galactic nuclei (AGN) both spectroscopically and photometrically. The photometric observations used in this work span over four years and provide an excellent baseline for variability studies of these objects. We present the photometric light curves from 2014 to 2017 obtained by the Steward Observatory's Bok telescope and the CFHT telescope with MegaCam. We provide details on the data acquisition and processing of the data from each telescope, the difference imaging photometry used to produce the light curves, and the calculation of a variability index to quantify each AGN's variability. We find that the Welch-Stetson J-index provides a useful characterization of AGN variability and can be used to select AGNs for further study.