Space telescope RM project. III. NGC 5548 LCs

The light curves have nearly daily cadence from 2014 January to July in nine filters (BVRI and ugriz). Combined with ultraviolet data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Swift, we confirm significant time delays between the continuum bands as a function of wavelength, extending the wavelength coverage from 1158{AA} to the z band (~9160{AA}).

We find that the lags at wavelengths longer than the V band are equal to or greater than the lags of high-ionization-state emission lines (such as HeII{lambda}1640 and {lambda}4686), suggesting that the continuum-emitting source is of a physical size comparable to the inner broad-line region (BLR). The trend of lag with wavelength is broadly consistent with the prediction for continuum reprocessing by an accretion disk with {tau}{propto}{lambda}^4/3^.