We study the long-term variability in the optical monitoring database of Ark 120, a nearby radio-quiet active galactic nucleus (AGN) at a distance of 143 Mpc (z = 0.03271). We compiled the historical archival photometric and spectroscopic data since 1974 and conducted a new two-year monitoring campaign in 2015–2017, resulting in a total temporal baseline over four decades. The long-term variations in the optical continuum exhibit a wave-like pattern and the Hβ integrated flux series varies with a similar behavior. The broad Hβ profiles have asymmetric double peaks, which change strongly with time and tend to merge into a single peak during some epochs. The period in the optical continuum determined from various period-search methods is about 20 yr, and the estimated false alarm probability with null hypothesis simulations is about 1 × 10⁻³. The overall variations of the broad Hβ profiles also follow the same period. However, the present database only covers two cycles of the suggested period, which strongly encourages continued monitoring to track more cycles and confirm the periodicity. Nevertheless, in light of the possible periodicity and the complicated Hβ profile, Ark 120 is one candidate of the nearest radio-quiet AGNs with possible periodic variability, and it is thereby a potential candidate host for a sub-parsec supermassive black hole binary.

Microquasars occasionally exhibit massive jet ejections which are distinct from the continuous or quasi-continuous weak jet ejections. Because those massive jet ejections are rare and short events, they have hardly been observed in X-ray so far. In this paper, the first X-ray observation of a massive jet ejection from the microquasar SS 433 with the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) is reported. SS 433 undergoing a massive ejection event shows a variety of new phenomena including a QPO-like feature near 0.1 Hz, rapid time variability, and shot-like activities. The shot-like activity may be caused by the formation of a small plasma bullet. A massive jet may be consist of thousands of those plasma bullets ejected from the binary system. The size, mass, internal energy, and kinetic energy of the bullets and the massive jet are estimated.Comment: 21 pages including 5 figures, submitted to Ap

Spectrograms of the Seyfert galaxy Ark 120 obtained in 1976–2013 are used to measure the radial velocities of emission features. It is assumed that these emission features with variable radial velocities are radiated by objects moving along Keplerian orbits in the gravitational field of the central body. Based on the available data, the parameters of the motion of three objects in the near-nuclear region of Ark 120 are calculated; the mass of its central body is estimated to be (1.675 ± 0.028) × 10⁸ M _⊙.

Possible orbits for the motion of a region in the gravitational field of the central body of the galaxy NGC 4151 are presented. The region is manifest through its line emission, observed in the red wing of the Hα, Pβ, and other broad lines. We carried out a computer selection of all Keplerian orbits for which the measured radial velocities of the emission-line region could be observed. We used radial-velocity data obtained by us at the Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, as well as data from the literature. The computation results can be used to determine the mass range for the central body of NGC 4151 that provides the best agreement with the observational data: (61–65)× 10⁶ M _⊙. Suitably designed monitoring of active galactic nuclei can be used to verify these results, and to carry out similar analyses for other Seyfert galaxies.