Description
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 0.91m telescope, the 0.76m Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope, 0.6m Super-LOTIS (Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System) at Kitt Peak, the Palomar 60inch telescope, and the 2m 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.
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