Optical Monitoring of OJ 287 in 1995–2001

Abstract

VRI‐band CCD photometric observations of the BL Lac object OJ 287 have been carried out from 1995 February to 2001 December. A major outburst occurred in the fall of 1994, according to the literature. We observed that the brightness of OJ 287 declined rapidly and found that another outburst occurred between 2000 November 5 and 2001 January 3. However, we do not think that the 12 yr cycle has broken down because the 2000 outburst is weaker than the major outburst in 1994–1995.