Highlights from the Whipple 10-m Blazar Monitoring Program
  Approximately 25 blazars are know to emit VHE (E>100 GeV) gamma rays.
Understanding these powerful objects requires long-term, intense, monitoring
observations since they exhibit strong, rapid and irregular variability across
the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The Whipple 10-m Gamma-ray Telescope, the
world's fourth most sensitive VHE telescope, is used primarily to perform such
monitoring in the VHE band. The 10-m monitoring program focuses in particular
on Mrk 421, Mrk 501, H 1426+428, 1ES 1959+650 and 1ES 2344+514, with
observations performed every moonless night that each source is visible. Upon
detection of a flare, alerts are sent to VERITAS and the astronomical community
to trigger ToO observations, as was the case for one of the brightest-ever VHE
flares of Mrk 421 in 2008. In addition to flaring alerts, the 10-m program is
used to create long-term light curves, with unprecedented VHE sampling, that
can be combined with other multi-frequency observations to better understand
blazars. Highlights from the recent Whipple 10-m blazar program will be
presented.
