We present extended optical monitoring of the quadruply-imaged gravitationally lensed quasar QSO 2237+0305, the Einstein Cross, including observations from different observatories in both hemispheres and using a new photometric technique. This technique uses a region far enough from the lens system to accurately determine the sky background level and minimises contamination from the lensing galaxy by combining analytical and numerical modelling of its structure. The resulting light curves of the four quasar images describe variations across practically the entire optical spectrum and span about 9000 days in the VRI bands. We captured the multi-band microlensing variability with an unprecedented level of detail, and a preliminary microlensing analysis reveals an almost linear scaling of the source radius with wavelength, providing direct evidence for the wavelength-dependent structure of the region contributing to optical passband fluxes. Specifically, assuming a mean microlens mass łangle M ̊angle = 0.3 and concentric Gaussian sources that move according to the velocity distribution peaks (speed and direction) reported in a previous microlensing analysis, we find that the half-light radius of the g-band source is 9.6 ± 2.7 lt-day and the size of the sources grows with wavelength, with a power-law index of α = 0.94 ± 0.05. We conclude that these long-term light curves set stringent empirical constraints on models of quasar emission and microlensing physics.
Shalyapin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.