Dimming of Mrk1018 has stopped!
Our team continued to monitor the changing-look AGN Mrk1018 after its rapid decline. Our new paper led by Mirko Krumpe nicely shows that the dimming of Mrk1018 surprisingly halted by now and has likely reached a minimum in activity. This already rules out some scenarios like a tidal-disruption event. It opens the possibility that Mrk1018 is turning bright again at some point. Our multi-wavelength monitoring of Mrk1018 is therefore continuing and we are expected to present exciting results on this enigmatic AGN in the next years.
U-band light curve of Mrk1018 after deblending the AGN and host galaxy light using galfit. The strong decline of the changling-look AGN has clearly stopped and shows variabiliy on yearly timescales.