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Optical Variability Of Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies, Elizabeth S. Klimek, C. Martin Gaskell, Cecilia H. Hedrick

Department of Physics and Astronomy: Faculty Publications

We present results of a broadband photometric study of the optical variability of six narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies observed at 172 epochs. We searched for microvariability on 33 nights. Strong evidence for microvariability was found only for our lowest luminosity object, NGC 4051, on one night. Weaker evidence suggests such variability on a few other nights for two other objects, but the data are not as convincing. Intranight variability in NLS1’s is thus concluded to be rare and of low amplitude. We give illustrations of how variable image quality can produce spurious variability. We find that for well-studied non-NLS1’s …