RoboPol: AGN polarimetric monitoring data

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive, uniformly processed dataset of optical polarimetric observations of 222 active galactic nuclei collected over four years, including data processing, calibration, and public data release.

Contribution

The paper introduces a standardized pipeline for processing and calibrating AGN polarimetric data and provides the first large, publicly available dataset from the RoboPol program.

Findings

5068 observations of 222 AGN included

Average polarization and variability metrics calculated

Data made publicly accessible for further research

Abstract

We present uniformly reprocessed and re-calibrated data from the RoboPol programme of optopolarimetric monitoring of active galactic nuclei (AGN), covering observations between 2013, when the instrument was commissioned, and 2017. In total, the dataset presented in this paper includes 5068 observations of 222 AGN with Dec > -25 deg. We describe the current version of the RoboPol pipeline that was used to process and calibrate the entire dataset, and we make the data publicly available for use by the astronomical community. Average quantities summarising optopolarimetric behaviour (average degree of polarization, polarization variability index) are also provided for each source we have observed and for the time interval we have followed it.