Related papers: Gaia Sees Blazars Move: Locating Optical Flares Us…
The exact location of the $\gamma$-ray emitting region in blazar jets has long been a matter of debate. However, the location has important implications about the emission processes, geometric and physical parameters of the jet, as well as…
Quasars are often considered to be point-like objects. This is largely true and allows for an excellent alignment of the optical positional reference frame of the ongoing ESA mission Gaia with the International Celestial Reference Frame.…
We have analyzed the differences in positions of 9081 matched sources between the Gaia DR2 and VLBI catalogues. The median position uncertainty of matched sources in the VLBI catalogue is a factor of two larger than the median position…
We are leading a comprehensive multi-waveband monitoring program of 34 gamma-ray bright blazars designed to locate the emission regions of blazars from radio to gamma-ray frequencies. The "maps" are anchored by sequences of images in both…
Since its launch in 2013, the Gaia space telescope has provided precise measurements of the positions and magnitudes of over 1 billion stars. This has enabled extensive searches for stellar and sub-stellar companions through astrometric and…
For a sample of 51 blazars with extensive optical polarization data, we used circular statistics to calculate the scatter among the polarization position angles for each object. We found that this scatter is correlated with the radio core…
Relativistic jets in AGN in general, and in blazars in particular, are the most energetic and among the most powerful astrophysical objects known so far. Their relativistic nature provides them with the ability to emit profusely at all…
Blazars exhibit flares across the electromagnetic spectrum. Many $\gamma$-ray flares are highly correlated with flares detected at optical wavelengths; however, a small subset appears to occur in isolation, with little or no variability…
Since the launch of the Fermi satellite, BL Lacertae has been moderately active at gamma-rays and optical frequencies until May 2011, when the source started a series of strong flares. The exceptional optical sampling achieved by the…
Context. Gaia Early Data Release 3 (Gaia EDR3) provides accurate astrometry for about 1.6 million compact (QSO-like) extragalactic sources, 1.2 million of which have the best-quality five-parameter astrometric solutions. Aims. The proper…
Astrometric microlensing is a unique tool to measure stellar masses. It allows us to determine the mass of the lensing star with an accuracy of a few per cent. In this paper, we update, extend, and refine our predictions of…
We present the early installment of the third Gaia data release, Gaia EDR3, consisting of astrometry and photometry for 1.8 billion sources brighter than magnitude 21, complemented with the list of radial velocities from Gaia DR2. Gaia EDR3…
Blazars are the most violent steady/recurrent sources of high-energy gamma-ray emission in the known Universe. They are prominent emitters of electromagnetic radiation throughout the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The observable radiation…
It is widely accepted that strong and variable radiation detected over all accessible energy bands in a number of active galaxies arises from a relativistic, Doppler-boosted jet pointing close to our line of sight. The size of the emitting…
Blazars are a class of active galactic nuclei which host relativistic jets oriented close to the observer's line of sight. Blazars have very complex variability properties. Flares, namely flux variations around the mean value with a…
The gravitational pull of an unseen companion to a luminous star is well-known to cause deviations to the parallax and proper motion of a star. In a previous paper in this series, we argue that the astrometric mission Gaia can identify…
Positions and proper motions of Gaia sources are expressed in a reference frame that ideally should be non-rotating relative to distant extragalactic objects, coincident with the International Celestial Reference System (ICRS), and…
We present a novel method to detect variable astrophysical objects and transient phenomena using anomalous excess scatter in repeated measurements from public catalogs of Gaia DR2 and Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) DR3 photometry. We first…
The Early Gaia Data Release 3 (EDR3) provides precise astrometry for nearly 1.5 billion sources across the entire sky. A few tens of these are associated with neutron stars in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. Here, we report on a search…
Gaia will open up a huge volume of new parameter space in which to explore the physics of AGN and black hole evolution. We address the question as to how far along the relativistic jets blazar radio, optical and gamma ray emission…