Extremely violent optical microvariability in blazars: fact or fiction?

Abstract

Variability amplitudes larger than 1 magnitude over time-scales of a few tens of minutes have recently been reported in the optical light-curves of several blazars. In order to independently verify the real occurrence of such extremely violent events, we undertook an observational study of a selected sample of three blazars: PKS 0048-097, PKS 0754+100, and PKS 1510-089. Possible systematic error sources during data acquisition and reduction were carefully evaluated. We indeed found flux variability at intra-night time-scales in all three sources, although no extremely violent behaviour, as reported by other authors, was detected. We show that an incorrect choice of the stars used for differential photometry will, under fairly normal conditions, lead to spurious variability with large amplitudes on short time-scales. Wrong results of this kind can be avoided with the use of simple error-control techniques.