Related papers: Evolving parsec-scale radio structure in the most …

Jets may have contributed to promoting the growth of seed black holes in the early Universe, and thus observations of radio-loud high-redshift quasars are crucial to understanding the growth and evolution of the early supermassive black…

Active galactic nuclei are the most luminous persistent (non-transient, even if often variable) objects in the Universe. They are bright in the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Blazars are a special class where the jets point nearly to our…

Black holes, anywhere in the stellar-mass to supermassive range, are often associated with relativistic jets. Models suggest that jet production may be a universal process common in all black hole systems regardless of their mass. Although…

The spectra of blazars form a sequence which can be parametrized in term of their observed bolometric luminosity. At the most powerful extreme of the sequence we find objects whose jet power can rival the power extracted by accretion, while…

The prominent radio quasar PKS 2215+020 (J2217+0220) was once labelled as a new laboratory for core--jet physics at redshift z=3.572 because of its exceptionally extended jet structure traceable with very long baseline interferometric…

High resolution radio observations remain the most direct way to study the formation and evolution of radio jets associated with the accretion onto massive black holes. We report preliminary results of our seven year VLBA observational…

We present Director's Discretionary Time multi-frequency observations obtained with the Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) of the blazar PSO J030947.49+271757.31 (hereafter PSO J0309+27) at $z =…

Blazars are active galactic nuclei (AGN) whose relativistic jets point nearly to the line of sight. Their compact radio structure can be imaged with very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) on parsec scales. Blazars at extremely high…

Supermassive black holes at the centre of active galactic nuclei power some of the most luminous objects in the Universe. Typically, very long baseline interferometric (VLBI) observations of blazars have revealed only funnel-like…

Advances in the capabilities of X-ray, gamma-ray and TeV telescopes have brought new information on the physics of relativistic jets, which are responsible for the blazar "phenomenon". In particular the broad band sensitivity of the…

The characteristic properties of blazars (rapid variability, strong polarization, high brightness) are widely attributed to a powerful relativistic jet oriented close to our line of sight. Despite the spectral energy distributions (SEDs)…

Beppo}SAX contributed substantially to our understanding of the physics of blazars. This has been made possible mainly by its wide energy range and especially by its high energy detector. Together with the information coming from still…

The blazar AO 0235+164 is a key source for studying the interplay between multi-wavelength variability in its light curves and changes in the position angles and apparent velocities of its parsec-scale jet components. In this work, we…

The new high energy data coming mainly from the Fermi and Swift satellites and from the ground based Cerenkov telescopes are making possible to study not only the energetics of blazar jets, but also their connection to the associated…

The high-redshift quasar PMN J0909+0354 ($z=3.288$) is known to have a pc-scale compact jet structure, based on global 5-GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations performed in 1992. Its kpc-scale structure was studied with…

Blazar spectra are one of the most important windows into the physical processes occurring along jets. The spectrum, composed from the different emitting regions along the jet, allows us to constrain the physical conditions in the jet. I…

On the kiloparsec scale, extragalactic radio jets show two distinct morphologies related to their power: collimated high-power jets ending in a bright termination shock and low-power jets opening up close to the core and showing a more…

The search for extremely massive high redshift blazars is essential to put strong constraints on the supermassive black holes formation theories. Up to now, the few blazars known to have a redshift larger than 4 have been discovered…

We report the discovery of a radio-loud flat-spectrum QSO at z=5.47 with properties similar to those of the EGRET gamma-ray blazars. This source is the brightest radio QSO at z>5, with a pc-scale radio jet and a black hole mass estimate…

We present proper motions obtained from a dual frequency, six-epoch, VLBA polarization experiment monitoring a sample of 12 blazars. The observations were made at 15 GHz and 22 GHz at bi-monthly intervals over 1996. Ten of the eleven…