Related papers: The HRX-BL Lac sample - evolution of BL Lac object…
BL Lac objects are an extreme type of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that belong to the largest population of $\gamma$-ray sources: blazars. This class of AGNs shows a double-bumped spectral energy distribution that is commonly described in…
We have measured multi-band optical flux and colour variations for a sample of 12 low energy peaked blazars on short, day-to-month, timescales. Our sample contains six BL Lacertae objects and six flat spectrum radio quasars. These…
(abridged) We present near-infrared Ks-band imaging of 13 high redshift (0.6 < z < 1.3) BL Lac objects. We clearly detect the host in eight objects, and marginally in three others. In all cases, the host galaxy is well represented by an…
We present long term optical and near infrared flux variability analysis of 37 blazars detected in the $\gamma$-ray band by the {\it Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope}. Among them, 30 are flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) and 7 are BL Lac…
A multifrequency campaign on the BL Lac object PG 1553+113 was organized by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) in 2013 April-August, involving 19 optical, two near-IR, and three radio telescopes. The aim was to study the source…
We discuss the optical polarization properties of X-ray selected BL Lacertae objects (XSBLs) as determined from three years of monitoring 37 BL Lac objects and candidates. The observed objects include a complete X-ray flux limited sample…
Recent multifrequency polarimetric observations of the eponymous blazar BL Lac reveal an extremely large degree of polarization in the optical band (average of $25\%$, reaching $45\%$), together with a small ($\lesssim 7\%$) degree of…
The multi-frequency Sedentary Survey is a flux limited, statistically well-defined sample of highly X-ray dominated BL Lacertae objects (HBLs) which includes 150 sources. In this paper, the third of the series, we report the results of a…
Polarization measurements are presented for 52 radio-loud QSOs and BL Lac objects. For 9 highly polarized (p >3%) AGN, these are the first published polarization measurements. Of these 9, 7 are highly-polarized QSOs (HPQs), one is a BL Lac…
The MAGIC telescopes observed S2 0109+22 in 2015 July during its flaring activity in high energy gamma rays observed by Fermi-LAT. We analyse the MAGIC data to characterise the very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emission of S2 0109+22, which…
We evaluate with numerical simulations the hypothesis that BL Lacertae objects are the remnants of Quasi Stellar Objects. This hypothesis is based on their highly peculiar redshift evolution. They have a comoving space density that…
We present the first measurement of the projected correlation function of 485 gamma-ray selected Blazars, divided in 175 BLLacertae (BL Lacs) and 310 Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQs) detected in the 2-year all-sky survey by Fermi-Large…
Using data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer we studied the mid infrared 3.4 $\mu$m (W1-band) and 4.6 $\mu$m (W2-band) flux variability of $\gamma$-ray emitting blazars. Our sample consists of 460 flat spectrum radio quasars…
Extreme high-energy peaked BL Lac objects (EHBLs) are an emerging class of blazars with exceptional spectral properties. The non-thermal emission of the relativistic jet peaks in the spectral energy distribution (SED) plot with the…
Several blazars, and BL Lac objects in particular, show a misalignment between the jet orientation on parsec and kiloparsec scales. Some authors (i.e. Conway & Murphy, 1993) have attempted to explain this behaviour invoking helical jets for…
Blazars have traditionally been separated into two broad categories based upon their optical emission characteristics; BL Lacs, with faint or no emission lines, and flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) with prominent, broad emission lines.…
High energy observations of extreme BL Lac objects, such as 1ES 0229+200 or 1ES 0347-121, recently focused interest both for blazar and jet physics and for the implication on the extragalactic background light and intergalactic magnetic…
The very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray spectral indices of blazars show strong correlation with the source redshift. Absence of any such correlation in low energy gamma rays and X-rays indicate the presence of Extragalactic Background Light…
BL Lacs are an enigmatic class of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), characterized by the non-thermal continuum typically attributed to synchrotron and inverse Compton emission. Depending on the frequency location of the maxima of these…
We present radio observations at three frequencies and contemporaneous optical monitoring of the peculiar BL Lac object AO 0235+164. During a three-week campaign with the VLA we observed intraday variability in this source and found a…