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OJ-94 project was created for monitoring BL Lac object OJ 287 during
its predicted outburst. OJ 287 is one of the best observed BL Lac
objects. Its observations date back for over 100 years. This
historical light curve shows several large outbursts, that seem to
occur every 12 years. Based on the historical light curve Sillanpää
et al. (1988, ApJ 325, 628) predicted that a new outburst would occur
during autumn 1994.
The project started autumn 1993, when we received the ITP-time on
the Canary Island Telescopes for a half a year period. Since we are
interested in intensive long term monitoring on OJ 287, we organised
a large intenational collaboration for this monitoring. At present
there are over 50 astronomers from 10 countries involved in the project.
Project members
use whatever instruments they have at their disposal for this monitoring,
and send the reduced data into the
data archive,
that is maintained at
Tuorla observatory.
Blazars 3C66A, S5 0716+714 and AO 0235+164 were selected as comparison
objects for OJ 287. We hoped to use the observations of these objects
for checking and removing instrumental effects from the OJ 287
observations. All these objects have shown large intrinsic variability,
that is very useful in studying their properties.
Project results
have been discussed in
project meetings
and in
published articles.
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