IUE and ROSAT monitoring of the bright QSO H1821+643

The analysis is presented of IUE observations of the bright QSO H1821+643, obtained during the ROSAT All Sky Survey (the RIASS program). The objectives were: (1) to establish whether the UV and soft X ray radiation have the same physical origin; and (2) to determine if this physical origin is an accretion disk. Supporting ground based spectrophotometry was also obtained. The analysis shows that the shape and flux level of the UV continuum did not vary among the seven IUE observation spanning one month, to an upper limit of about 8 percent. So it is of great interest to determine whether the soft X ray flux varied during this period. Since X ray variability in AGNs is often more rapid and of higher amplitude than in the UV, detection of X ray variability in the ROSAT data could severely challenge the accretion disk model for the soft X ray excess.