Related papers: An Optical View of BL Lacertae Objects

Host galaxies of Active Galactic Nuclei give crucial information on the interaction between accreting Supermassive Black Holes and their surroundings, and on their common evolution. Their study in the case of aligned jetted AGN - BL…

The most elusive and extreme sub-class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), known as BL Lac objects, shows features that can only be explained as the result of relativistic effects occurring in jets pointing at a small angle with respect to…

The past 20 years have seen phenomenal progress in our understanding of BL Lac objects. They form part of the blazar class, which are radio-loud AGN whose relativistic jets are aligned along our line of sight. Several critical milestones…

We explain the properties of X-ray selected BL Lacertae objects, under the assumption that they constitute the small minority of the BL Lac population with energy cutoff located in the UV/X-ray band, as suggested by their multifrequency…

We report on the optical properties of a sample of 30 BL Lac host galaxies in the redshift range $0.03<z<0.2$, as derived from HST observations. All galaxies are fully resolved in the WFPC2 (F702W filter) images, allowing a quantitative…

BL Lacertae objects are an extreme subclass of AGNs showing rapid and large-amplitude variability, high and variable polarization, and core-dominated radio emissions. If a strong beaming effect is the cause of the extreme observation…

Aims: We present optical spectroscopy of a sample of BL Lac objects, to determine their redshift, to study their broad emission line properties and to characterize their close environment. Methods: Twelve objects were observed using the ESO…

Snapshot images of about 100 BL Lac objects were obtained with WFPC2 on HST. Sources from various samples, in the redshift range 0.05 to 1.2, were observed and 61 resolved (51 with known z). The high resolution and homogeneity of the images…

The BL Lacertae (BL Lac) object OJ 287 is one of the most dynamic blazars across the directly accessible observational windows: spectral, timing, polarization, and imaging. Apart from behaviors considered characteristics of blazars, it…

We present H-band imaging of 23 low redshift (z < 0.3) BL Lac objects that were previously investigated by us in the R-band. For all the observed objects, the host galaxy is well represented by an elliptical model, with average scale length…

We investigate why BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) have values of the Ca H&K break (a stellar absorption feature) lower than low-power radio galaxies and if its use is justified to separate the two classes. For this purpose we relate this…

Blazars are a class of jet-dominated active galactic nuclei with a typical double-humped spectral energy distribution. It is of common consensus the Synchrotron emission to be responsible for the low frequency peak, while the origin of the…

BL Lacertae is not only archetypical of an entire class of jet-dominated active galactic nuclei, blazars, but also one of the most active and rapidly changing objects in this class. In the fall of 2024 (September--November), BL Lacertae…

We investigate the properties of the host galaxies of X-ray selected (high frequency peaked) BL Lac objects using a large and homogeneous data set of high spatial resolution R-band observations of 52 BL Lacs in the EMSS and Slew samples.…

BL Lac objects are an elusive and rare class of active galactic nuclei. For years their evolutionary behavior has appeared inconsistent with the trend observed in the population of AGN at large. The so-called ``negative'' evolution implies…

Blazars are the established sources of an intense and variable non-thermal radiation extending from radio wavelengths up to HE and VHE gamma-rays. Understanding the spectral evolution of blazars in selected frequency ranges, as well as…

Many properties of BL Lacs have become explicable in terms of the "relativistic beaming" hypothesis whereby BL Lacs are FR-1 radio galaxies viewed nearly along the jet axis. However, a possible problem with this model is that a transition…

Aims. We aim to determine the redshift (or stringent lower limits) of a number of bright BL Lacs objects. Methods. We secured medium resolution optical and near-infrared spectra of 4 bright BL Lac objects of unknown redshift using the…

We present deep radio images at 1.4 GHz of a large and complete sample of BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs) selected from the Deep X-ray Radio Blazar Survey (DXRBS). We have observed 24 northern sources with the Very Large Array (VLA) in both…

BL Lac objects are low--power active nuclei exhibiting a variety of peculiar properties that are caused by the presence of a relativistic jet and orientation effects. We present here adaptive optics near-IR images at high spatial resolution…