2017MNRAS.465.1898S

We summarize results of the analysis of the optical variability of the continuum and emission-line fluxes in the 3C 390.3 nucleus during 1992-2014. The [O III] λ5007 flux increases monotonically by ≃30 per cent in 2003-2014. The narrow Balmer lines show similar monotonic increase, while the variability patterns of the [O I] λ6300 narrow line are completely different from that of [O III]. The reverberation lags are found to be 88.6 ± 8.4, 161 ± 15, and 113 ± 14 d for the Hβ, Hα, and Hγ broad emission lines, respectively. The reverberation mass of the central black hole equals to (1.87 ± 0.26) x 10⁹ M_☉ and (2.81 ± 0.38) x 10⁹ M_☉, for the Hβ and Hα lines and assuming a scaling factor which converts the virial product to a mass to be f = 5.5. A difference between both masses can point to a difference between kinematics of the Hα and Hβ emission regions. We show that the reverberation mapping can only be applied to the entire period of observations of the 3C 390.3 nucleus after removing a long-term trend. This trend has been expressed by a slowly varying scalefactor c(t) in the power-law relationship between the line and continuum fluxes: F_line∝c(t) F_cont^a. We find that the power-law index a equals to 0.77 and 0.54 for the Hβ and Hα lines, respectively. The observed relationship between the Balmer decrement and the optical continuum flux is as follows: F(Hα)/F(H β) ∝F_cont^–0.20 and F(Hβ)/F(H γ) ∝F_cont^–0.18. The 3C 390.3 nucleus is an 'outsider' in the relationship between optical luminosity and black hole mass. Its Eddington ratio is E_bol/E_Edd = 0.0037.