Related papers: Recent highlights in the X-ray study of blazars
Simultaneous observations of blazars in different spectral regimes imply that the amplitude of variability depends on the observational band. Both in the low energy spectral component and in the high energy spectral component, the amplitude…
Since 1997, BL Lacertae has undergone a phase of high optical activity, with the occurrence of several prominent outbursts. Starting from 1999, the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) consortium has organized various multifrequency…
Blazars are characterized by large amplitude and fast variability, indicating that the electron distribution is rapidly changing, often on time scales shorter than the light crossing time. We study the time dependent behavior of the…
The phenomenology of gamma-ray bright blazars can be accounted for by a sequence in the source power and intensity of the diffuse radiation field surrounding the relativistic jet. Correspondingly, the equilibrium particle distribution peaks…
We present preliminary results of a statistical analysis obtained with a sample of blazars observed at the Perugia Astronomical Observatory since 1992. We briefly show how these statistical results can be useful to discriminate faint…
Relativistic effects dominate the emission of blazar jets complicating our understanding of their intrinsic properties. Although many methods have been proposed to account for them, the variability Doppler factor method has been shown to…
Gamma-ray emitting blazars have been the targets of many recent or ongoing monitoring programmes. The resulting multi-wavelength data archives are ideal for studying the quiescent and variable behaviour of the blazar PKS 2155-304. Here,…
The aim of this white paper is to discuss the observing strategies for the LSST Wide-Fast-Deep that would improve the study of blazars (emission variability, census, environment) and Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). For blazars, these include the…
I address the need for deep blazar surveys by showing that our current understanding of blazars is based on a relatively small number of intrinsically luminous sources. I then review the on-going deeper surveys, addressing in particular…
Gamma-ray bursters emit a small fraction of their flux in X rays, and because X-ray detectors are often very sensitive they may probe the gamma-ray burst universe more deeply than the current best gamma-ray instruments. On the reasonable…
Flux distribution is an important tool to understand the variability processes in active galactic nuclei. We now have available a great deal of observational evidences pointing towards the presence of log-normal components in the high…
High-energy gamma rays are a valuable tool for studying particle acceleration and radiation in the magnetospheres of energetic pulsars. The seven or more pulsars seen by instruments on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) show that: the…
Blazars are highly variable sources over timescales that can be as low as minutes. This is the case of the High Energy Peaked BL Lac (HBL) objects showing strong variability in X-rays, which highly correlate with that of the TeV emission.…
The INTEGRAL satellite has collected a large amount of data on magnetars in our Galaxy, spanning more than 20 years starting from 2003. The large data set obtained with the IBIS/ISGRI instrument at energies above 20 keV allows us to study…
We report on two Chandra observations of the quasar PSO J0309+27, the most distant blazar observed so far (z=6.1), performed eight months apart, in March and November 2020. Previous Swift-XRT observation showed that this object is one of…
In this presentation, we report the results of intraday variability in the optical (BVRI bands) and hard X-ray band (3-79 keV) in a number of blazars. In the optical microvariability studies of the blazars S5 0716+714 and BL Lac, we…
The TeV blazar PKS 2155--304 was the subject of an intensive 2 week optical and near-infrared observing campaign in 2004 August with the CTIO 0.9m telescope. During this time, simultaneous X-ray data from RXTE were also obtained. We compare…
We study the quasi-simultaneous near-IR, optical, UV, and X-ray photometry of eleven gamma-ray selected blazars for which redshift estimates larger than 1.2 have been recently provided. Four of these objects turn out to be high-power…
We report on long-term multi-wavelength monitoring of blazar Mrk 421 by the GASP-WEBT collaboration and Steward Observatory, and by the Swift and Fermi satellites. We study the source behaviour in the period 2007-2015, characterized by…
With their rapid, violent variability and broad featureless continuum emission, blazars have puzzled astronomers for over two decades. Today blazars represent the only extragalactic objects detected in high-energy gamma-rays. Their spectral…