Related papers: Doppler factors, Lorentz factors and viewing angle…

Relativistic effects dominate the emission of blazar jets complicating our understanding of their intrinsic properties. Although many methods have been proposed to account for them, the variability Doppler factor method has been shown to…

Two key results are presented in this paper. First, equipartition Doppler factors have been estimated for a sample of 105 sources with previously estimated inverse Compton Doppler factors. The different categories of active galactic nuclei…

In 2021 BL Lacertae underwent an extraordinary activity phase, which was intensively followed by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) Collaboration. We present the WEBT optical data in the BVRI bands acquired at 36 observatories around…

Radio-bright BL Lacertae objects (BLOs) are typically variable and exhibit prominent flaring. We use a sample of 24 BLOs to get a clear idea of their flaring behavior and to find possible commonalities in their variability patterns. Our…

Recent population studies have shown that the variability Doppler factors can adequately describe blazars as a population. We use the flux density variations found within the extensive radio multi-wavelength datasets of the F-GAMMA program,…

We investigate the relation between the Doppler factor determined from variations in total flux at 22 and 37 GHz, and the apparent transverse velocity determined from VLBA observations at 2 cm. The data are consistent with the relativistic…

Blazar population models have shown that the inverse-Compton and variability Doppler factor estimates yield consistent results at the population level for flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs). The two methods, however, are inconsistent when…

We present multi-epoch, parsec-scale core brightness temperature observations of 447 AGN jets from the MOJAVE and 2cm Survey programs at 15 GHz from 1994 to 2019. The brightness temperature of each jet over time is characterized by its…

We investigate the dependence of gamma-ray brightness of blazars on intrinsic properties of their parsec-scale radio jets and the implication for relativistic beaming. By combining apparent jet speeds derived from high-resolution VLBA…

We started a follow-up investigation of the Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey objects with declination >-10 deg. We undertook a survey with the EVN at 5GHz to make the first images of a complete sample of weak blazars, aiming at a comparison…

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are some of the brightest and most variable objects in the Universe. Those with relativistic jets observed at small viewing angles are blazars. Due to Doppler boosting, blazars exhibit extreme stochastic…

We present EVN observations of seven BL Lac objects selected from the RGB sample. To investigate the intrinsic radiation property of BL Lac objects, we estimated the Doppler factor with the VLA or MERLIN core and the total 408 MHz…

We study the effect of variable jet bulk Lorentz factors, i.e., either jet acceleration or deceleration, on partially synchrotron self-absorbed radio spectra from cores of radio-loud active galactic nuclei and black-hole binaries in the…

We present new, simultaneous, multifrequency observations of 45 out of the 55 candidate High Frequency Peakers (HFP) selected by Dallacasa et al. (2000), carried out 3 to 4 years after a first set of observations. Our sub-sample consists of…

Clues to the physical conditions in radio cores of blazars come from measurements of brightness temperatures as well as effects produced by intrinsic opacity. We study the properties of the ultra compact blazar AO 0235+164 with RadioAstron…

The idea that Fanaroff-Riley Class~I Radio Galaxies contain core jets with Lorentz factors of the order of a few and are the parent population for BL~Lac Objects is examined, with particular reference to the data on two FRI Radio Galaxies,…

Supermassive black holes launch highly relativistic jets with velocities reaching Lorentz factors as high as $\Gamma>50$. How the jets accelerate to such high velocities and where along the jet do they reach terminal velocity are open…

We have measured multi-band optical flux and colour variations for a sample of 12 low energy peaked blazars on short, day-to-month, timescales. Our sample contains six BL Lacertae objects and six flat spectrum radio quasars. These…

There appears to be a fundamental problem facing Active Galactic Nuclei jet models that require highly relativistic ejection speeds and small jet viewing angles to explain the large apparent superluminal motions seen in so many of the…

We put forward a scenario where blazars are classified as flat-spectrum radio quasars, BL Lacs, low synchrotron, or high synchrotron peaked objects according to a varying combination of Doppler boosted radiation from the jet, emission from…