Related papers: Optical spectroscopy of Blazars for the Cherenkov …
High redshift blazars are among the most powerful non-explosive sources in the Universe and play a crucial role in understanding the evolution of relativistic jets. To understand these bright objects, we performed a detailed investigation…
Context. Blazars are radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) with a jet pointing at small angles towards the observer. The overall emitted spectrum is typically non-thermal, and in some cases the emission and/or absorption lines are so…
We present results of observations in the UV to near-IR range for eight blazars, three of which have been recently discovered at Very High Energies (VHE) and five appearing as interesting candidates for VHE {\gamma}-ray detection. We focus…
Measuring spectroscopic redshifts for BL Lacertae (BL Lac) objects, a class of blazar, is challenging because their optical spectrum lacks, or has weak, emission lines ( equivalent width $\leqslant5\AA$). In this situation, alternative…
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the next generation ground-based $\gamma$-ray observatory. It will provide an order of magnitude better sensitivity and an extended energy coverage, 20 GeV - 300 TeV, relative to current Imaging…
Blazars are some of the brightest UV and X-ray sources in the sky and are valuable probes of the elusive warm-hot intergalactic medium (WHIM; $T{\simeq} 10^5-10^7$ K). However, many of the brightest blazars$-$called BL Lac objects such as…
The BL Lac object 3C66A is one of the most luminous extragalactic sources at TeV $\gamma$-rays (VHE, i.e. $E >100$ GeV). Since TeV $\gamma$-ray radiation is absorbed by the extragalactic background light (EBL), it is crucial to know the…
Understanding the high-energy emission processes and variability patterns are two of the most challenging research problems associated with relativistic jets. In particular, the long-term (months-to-years) flux variability at very high…
Gamma rays with energy above 10 GeV interact with optical-UV photons resulting in pair production. Therefore, a large sample of high redshift sources of these gamma rays can be used to probe the extragalactic background starlight (EBL) by…
The Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope provides an unprecedented opportunity to study gamma-ray blazars. To capitalize on this opportunity, beginning in late 2007, about a year before the start of LAT…
PKS 1424+240 is a BL-Lac blazar with unknown redshift detected at high-energy gamma rays by Fermi-LAT with a hard spectrum. It was first detected at very-high-energy by VERITAS and latter confirmed by MAGIC. Attempts to find limits on its…
High-redshift ($z >3$) $\gamma$-ray blazars are rare, but they are crucial for our understanding of jet evolution, $\gamma$-ray production and propagation, and the growth of supermassive black holes in the early universe. A new analysis of…
The large majority of sources detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope are blazars, belonging in particular to the blazar subclass of BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs). BL Lacs often have featureless optical spectra, which make it…
BL Lac objects (BLL) are defined by the presence of very weak (typically $<$ 5 {\AA}) or even absent spectral lines. This makes determining their distance particularly challenging, especially at high redshift, where the sources are fainter…
We present optical spectroscopy secured at the 10m Gran Telescopio Canarias of the counterparts of 20 extragalactic gamma-ray sources detected by the Fermi satellite. The observations allow us to investigate the nature of these sources and…
A new method to constrain the distance of blazars with unknown redshift using combined observations in the GeV and TeV regimes will be presented. The underlying assumption is that the Very High Energy (VHE) spectrum corrected for the…
The emission of very-high-energy photons (VHE, E>100 GeV$) in blazars is closely connected to the production of ultra-relativistic particles and the role of these gamma-ray sources as cosmic particle accelerators. This work focuses on a…
Blazars are the brightest and most abundant persistent sources in the extragalactic gamma-ray sky. Due to their significance, they are often observed across various energy bands to explore potential correlations between emissions at…
As a follow-up of the optical spectroscopic campaign aimed at achieving completeness in the Third Catalog of Hard Fermi-LAT Sources (3FHL), we present here the results of a sample of 28 blazars of uncertain type observed using the 4m…
Blazars and in particular the subclass of high synchrotron peaked Active Galactic Nuclei are among the main targets for the present generation of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACTs) and will remain of great importance for very…