The Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2011: Photometric Light Curves

Abstract

In Spring 2011, the Lick AGN Monitoring Project observed a sample of 15 bright, nearby Seyfert 1 galaxies in the V band as part of a reverberation mapping campaign. The observations were taken at six ground-based telescopes, including the West Mountain Observatory 0.91 m telescope, the 0.76 m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, 0.6 m Super-LOTIS at Kitt Peak, the Palomar 60 inch telescope, and the 2 m Faulkes telescopes North and South. The V -band light curves measure the continuum variability of our sample of Seyferts on an almost daily cadence for 2–3 months. We use image-subtraction software to isolate the variability of the Seyfert nucleus from the constant V -band flux of the host galaxy for the most promising targets, and we adopt standard aperture photometry techniques for the targets with smaller levels of variability. These V -band light curves will be used, with measurements of the broad emission line flux, to measure supermassive black hole masses and to constrain the geometry and dynamics of the broad-line region through dynamical modeling techniques.