Related papers: Progress in understanding Blazars from BeppoSAX ob…
The study of multiwavelength flux and spectral variations during rapid flares from blazars provides strong constraints on the physical parameters of the compact emission regions responsible for these still poorly understood events. Although…
We present an in-depth and systematic variability study of a sample of 20 powerful blazars, including 12 BL Lacs and 8 flat spectrum radio quasars, applying various analysis tools such as flux distribution, symmetry analysis, and time…
Average Spectral Energy Distributions (SED) for different subgroups of blazars are derived from available homogeneous (but small) data sets, including the gamma-ray band. Comparing Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars (FSRQ) with BL Lacs extracted…
Blazars are astrophysical sources whose emission is dominated by non-thermal processes, typically interpreted as synchrotron and inverse Compton emission. Although the general picture is rather robust and consistent with observations, many…
The blazar 1ES 1959+650 was observed twice by BeppoSAX in September 2001 simultaneously with optical observations. We report here the X-ray data together with the optical, R_C magnitude, light curve since August 1995. The BeppoSAX…
We have observed with ROSAT six blazars from the sample of 31 polarized objects constructed by Impey and Tapia (1988). Results of the spectral analysis in the ROSAT band of three objects, PKS 0301-243, PKS 1055+018 and PG 1424+240 are…
We present a comprehensive temporal and spectral analysis of a few blazars using multi-wavelength observations. Rapid flux variations are quantified via the doubling/halving timescale method, revealing the shortest variability timescales of…
The present status of the blazar spectral sequence is discussed, including new findings about blazars selected with different criteria than the original complete radio-samples. Despite extensive searches of blazars "breaking" the sequence,…
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…
Blazars are highly variable, radio-loud active galactic nuclei with jets oriented at a small angle to the line of sight. The observed emission of these sources covers the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio frequencies up to the high…
A long ($>100,000$ seconds) observation of the bright BL Lac object PKS 2155-304 has been carried out with the Narrow Field Instruments of the BeppoSAX satellite as part of the Science Verification Phase. The source was detected between 0.1…
The blazar sequence, including negative correlations between radiative luminosity $L_{\rm rad}$ and synchrotron peak frequency $\nu$, and between Compton dominance $Y$ and $\nu$, is widely adopted as a phenomenological description of…
A prediction for the energy shift of the synchrotron spectrum of flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) during high-energy flares is presented. If the $\gamma$-ray emission of FSRQs is produced by Comptonization of external radiation, then the…
Since 2002, the number of detected blazars at E_\gamma > 100 GeV has more than doubled. I study all currently known BL Lac-type objects with published energy spectra. Their intrinsic energy spectra are reconstructed by removing…
Single-zone synchrotron self-Compton and external Compton models are widely used to explain broad-band Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of blazars from infrared to gamma-rays. These models bear obvious similarities to the homogeneous…
About twenty years of radio observations in five bands (from 4.8 to 37 GHz) of the BL Lac object GC 0109+224 (S2 0109+22, RGB J0112+227), are presented and analysed together with the optical data. Over the past ten years this blazar has…
The blazar Mkn 421 has been observed, as part of the AO1 Core Program, five times from 2 to 7 May 1997. In the LECS+MECS energy band the spectrum shows convex curvature, well represented by a broken power--law. Flux variability (more than a…
We present results of variability study of a sample of 20 powerful blazars using Fermi/LAT (0.1--300 GeV) observations. We studied decade-long observations applying various analysis tools such as flux distribution, symmetry analysis, and…
We have considered all blazars observed in the X-ray band and for which the slope of the X-ray spectrum is available. We have collected 421 spectra of 268 blazars, including 12 archival unpublished ASCA spectra of 7 blazars whose analysisis…
Blazars research is one of the hot topics of contemporary extra-galactic astrophysics. That is because these sources are the most abundant type of extra-galactic gamma-ray sources and are suspected to play a central role in multi-messenger…