The WEBT Campaign on the Blazar 3C279 in 2006

Understand

The quasar 3C279 was the target of an extensive multiwavelength monitoring campaign from January through April 2006, including an optical-IR-radio monitoring campaign by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) collaboration.

• In this paper we focus on the results of the WEBT campaign.
• The source exhibited substantial variability of optical flux and spectral shape, with a characteristic time scale of a few days.
• The variability patterns throughout the optical BVRI bands were very closely correlated with each other.