Related papers: Quantitative evaluation of the hypothesis that BL …
We present VLT long slit optical spectroscopy of the luminous BL Lacertae object PKS 2005-489. The high signal-to-noise ratio and the good spatial resolution of the data allow us to detect the signatures of ongoing star formation in an…
Blazars are a sub-population of quasars whose jets are nearly aligned with the line-of-sight, which tend to exhibit multi-wavelength variability on a variety of timescales. Quasi-periodic variability on year-like timescales has been…
Light bosons can be found in large classes of theories beyond the Standard Model. These light bosons may not be ruled out by current experiments and, indeed, may even provide an explanation for some anomalous experimental results. The…
Recent work on red and blue quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) has identified peculiar number distributions as a function of radio loudness that we explore and attempt to explain from the perspective of a picture in which a subset of the…
Detection of blazar pc scale counter-jets is difficult, but it can provide invaluable insight into the relativistic effects, radiative processes and the complex mechanisms of jet production, collimation and accelation in blazars. We build…
We withdraw our claim that a component in an XMM-Newton satellite light curve of the BL Lacertae object S5 0716 + 714 shows quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) of $\sim$30 minutes. Although both our original periodogram and wavelet analyses…
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…
Results from a long-term program to quantify the range of behavior of the cm-wavelength total flux and linear polarization variability properties of a sample of 41 radio-loud BL Lac objects using weekly to tri-monthly observations with the…
We present a detailed analysis of a sample of radio-detected quasars, obtained by matching together objects from the FIRST and 2dF Quasar Redshift Surveys. The dataset consists of 113 sources, spanning a redshift range 0.3 < z < 2.2, with…
We present near-infrared imaging of the host galaxies of 17 quasars in the redshift range 1 < z < 2, carried out at the ESO VLT UT1 8m telescope under excellent seeing conditions (~0.4 arcsec). The sample includes radio-loud (RLQ) and…
Red quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are a subset of the luminous end of the cosmic population of active galactic nuclei (AGN), most of which are reddened by intervening dust along the line-of-sight towards their central engines. In recent work…
We present a catalogue of 233 BL Lacertae objects compiled through an extensive bibliographic search updated to mid-1995. A large fraction of the sources listed in the catalogue belongs to well-defined samples and can be used for…
Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) are the most powerful relativistic jets seen from supermassive black holes (BHs) accreting via a radiatively efficient thin disc. Their high energy emission is well modelled by highly relativistic…
Beyond black holes and neutron stars, new hypothetical compact objects have been proposed as potential astrophysical entities. In general, their properties have not yet been fully explored or understood, nor has it been proven whether or…
We discuss possible ways to observationally detect the superdense cosmic objects composed of hypothetical sub-constituent fermions beneath the quark/lepton level, recently proposed by us. The characteristic mass and size of such objects…
Relativistic jets are thought to play a crucial role in the formation and evolution of massive galaxies and supermassive black holes. Blazars, which are quasars with jets aligned along our line of sight, provide insights into the jetted…
Together with the CMB, the three sources of information that astronomers have at high redshift as probes of the formation and evolution of the LSS are QSOs, galaxies and absorbers observed in the spectrum of distant background objects. In…
The heavy elements near QSOs provide unique measures of the star formation and chemical evolution in young galactic nuclei or pre-galactic condensations. Studies of quasar abundances also naturally address a variety of questions regarding…
Several recent studies show that bright, intermediate and high redshift optically and radio selected QSOs are positively correlated with nearby galaxies on a range of angular scales up to a degree. Obscuration by unevenly distributed…
Intrinsic emission and absorption lines of QSOs provide several independent probes of the metal abundances in QSO environments. They indicate that the metallicities are typically solar or higher out to redshifts z > 4. These results support…