Blazars in the Web
A blazar link collection

Created and maintained (not regularly) by S. Ciprini
(Contacts to point out changes, errors and new links are welcome.)


WEBT: the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope


Perugia Observatory Homepage


Blazars are a subset of the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN or active galaxies). This radio-loud extragalactic objects are optically violent variable quasars, flat-spectrum quasars, high polarized quasars, and BL Lacertae (BL Lac) type objects, which display extremely intense, broad and rapidly varing electromagnetic emission, from radio to gamma-rays in some case. This emission is thought to originate in a relativistic plasma jet which is probably to be powered and accelerated by a billion solar mass black hole in gravitational accretion. Blazars show intense, flat-spectrum radio-loud emission, and their relativistic jet point nearly straight toward us. The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory-EGRET  found that many blazars are intense gamma-ray sources. This has been one of the most exciting astrophysical discovery of past decade. They are called classic BL Lac type objects if the optical continuum emission dominates compared to any line emission.

Briefly a blazar, is an object thet have the following characteristics:

1) It appear optically point-like on the sky, i.e. not appear widespread like a galaxy or a nebula. Some blazars have nebulae around them (are fuzzy), but most of the light comes from a point source.
2) Their spectra appear to be smooth (i.e. no strong absorption lines that a star might have) and flatter than a star. These two properties by themselves would make them a quasar.
3) Their visible light is often partially polarized.
4) Their output in all wavelength bands varies more rapidly, and by a larger amount than a classical quasar, with a flare-like behaviour.
5) Many blazar emits a significant fraction of their radiation at energy above 100 MeV. Their flux is peaked in high bands around 10Mev-1Gev for the LBL (red-blazar) class, around 1GeV-100GeV for the HBL (blue-blazar) class and around 200Gev-1TeV for the few TeV-blazar.


    
 - Blazar paper abstracts by ADS-NASA
   
 - Blazar by Google
     

Main Blazar Sites

The Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT)
The WEB Telescope (WEBT) is a network of optical observers who in concert have the capability to obtain continuous, high-temporal-density, optical monitoring of blazars.

The Blazar Times
It is an electronic newsletter dedicated to research and refereed publications on the BL Lac and blazar phenomena, observationally as well as theoretically. The primary goal of the newsletter is to give easy and rapid access to the latest results in blazar research.

Active Galaxies Newsletter
This Newsletter is an electronic publication dedicated to the observation and theory of active galaxies. It is intended to be used to notify others in the field of recently accepted papers, conference proceedings and dissertations, and also contains contains announcements of jobs and conferences.

BLAZAR Data Journal  (Closed)
BLAZAR Data was an Electronic Journal dedicated to the rapid dissemination of observational researches on Blazars.

ENIGMA
It is a network on Blazar research, funded by the European Commission through the TMR (Training and Mobility through Research) program.

Landessternwarte Heidelberg  Finding Charts for AGN
The National Heidelberg Observatory site (Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl) contains a section dedicated to Extragalactic Astrophysics. (multifrequency studies of blazars too).

Quasar Optical monitoring at Colgate University

UMRAO Database Interface
The database is currently accessible with returned data in the form of ascii tables. All the data (going back to 1965 for some sources) are now on line.

Blazar Research at Boston University
The Boston University Blazar Group led by Prof. Alan Marscher.

Georgia State University Program in Extragalactic Astronomy
Contain reports from studies on microvariability of blazars and seyfert, jets, finding charts and comparision sequences.

Tuorla Observatory
The astronomical observatory of Turku University (Finland). Contains informations and data about the OJ-94 project and a section dedicated to the KVA and 1m-Tuorla monitoring of blazars in the optical.

Quasar Research at Metsahovi Radio Observatory

Blazars BeppoSAX catalog and data
The X-Ray astronomy satellite SAX homepage contains data archive of a selected list of SAX blazar. There are informations on the future gamma-ray ASI mission AGILE too.

Torino Astronomical Observatory
The site of the Torino Astronomical Observatory contains a research section about the Blazar Optical Monitoring and Extragalactic Physics.

The Optical Monitoring Blazar List at Perugia Observatory
The list of blazar observed during the monitoring program (1994-now) with the Automatic Imaging Telescope. Contains data, finding charts, photometric data of comparision stars and light curves.

3C 273's Database by ISDC Geneve
This site gives access to most world wide observations of the quasar 3C 273 covering more than 40 years of measurements from the radio band to gamma-rays.

Blazar Research at "La Sapienza" University - Rome . Contain also the SCAE group Blazar database.

Extragalactic X-ray Astronomy at Hamburger Sternwarte
X-ray astronomy became topic of research in Hamburg with the launch of the ROSAT satellite in 1990. A larger effort undertaken is the identification of ROSAT sources on Schmidt plates of the Hamburg Quasar Survey. Moreover they're working on the construction of a complete well defined X-ray selected sample of BL Lac objects

CGRO Science Support Center
The Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory (1991-2000) archive data for BATSE, OSSE, EGRET observations. In particular the site contains the CGRO Gamma-Ray Source Catalog .

GLAST Science Document and GLAST science at GSFC
Contain a section about the scientific topic about gamma-ray observations of blazars performed by the next generation Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope.

NED, NASA-IPAC Extragalactic Database
Contains more than 3 million of extragalactic objects measurements and references. It's operated by the JPL, under contract with the NASA.

CDS Strasbourg Database
Contains the Simbad, VizieR, Aladin, databases/services and other resources (catalogues, nomenclature, bibliography etc.). 

HEASARC AstroBrowse Service
This service developed by HEASARC allows users to query hundreds of different catalogs and services distributed around the world using a single simple interface.

Multimission STScI Archive

Level5 Knowledgebase for Extragalactic Astronomy
This service is supported in part by the NASA and by the Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), in conjunction with the NED. It bring together in a single Web site (where copyrights allow) original documents and reviews in html format and/or electronic links to articles of current and lasting interest to cosmologists, particle physicists and extragalactic astronomers. Contains data, catalogs, links, information and an active galaxies page.

GLAST Telescope Network

Blazar Research at Francis Marion University


Other Blazar Pages

Blazar

Max Planck Institute
for Radioastronomy - Bonn 

MAGIC Telescope project

HESS VHE Array

VERITAS VHE Array

GLAST - Large Area Telescope (LAT)

GLAST at NASA-GSFC

AGILE homepage

INTEGRAL Science Data Center

IAC Blazar Monitoring

WYBT by Armenzano Observatory

Padovani Homepage

Marscher Homepage

Kollgaard Homepage

Böttcher Homepage

Scarpa Homepage

Ghisellini Homepage

Blazar Observations and data at Ondrejov Observatory

Whipple Observations of TeV Blazar

BL Lac Monitoring at Iowa University

Falomo Homepage

Webb Homepage

Wagner Homepage

Hughes Jet Dynamics Research

Blazars at UCD HEA group

Dultzin-Hacyan Homepage

Celotti Homepage

Sambruna Homepage

Gabuzda Homepage

Kataoka Homepage

Crimean Astrophysical Observatory (CRAO)

Ast123 course with AGN pages by Jim Brau

Blazars by wikipedia

Blazar/QSO by belmontsoc (amateur telescopes)

 

Blazar, AGN & Related

Max-Planck-Institut fuer Astrophysysik  High Energy and Hydrodynamics Research

AGN Jet Research at MPI fuer Astronomie

WKU Center for Automated Space Science

Stockholm Observatory HEAD

Department of Astronomy University of São Paulo

AGN Watch Astronomers Consortium Page

Dermer GRB & AGN Page

Pian Homepage

QSO with z>4 Finding Charts

Research at RCfTA

Rizzi Blazar Catologue (pdf)

Quasars/blazars by the Belmont Society

Urry homepage

VSNET Light Curves

Hartman Homepage

Plasma Astrophysics at Thessaloniki Univ.

XMM-Newton

Chandra Science

Georgia University AGN Research

AGN Page at Masaryk University

Bill Keel's AGN slides

The BART Telescope

HEASARC Education on AGN

AGN at Dep. of Space PRL of India, Astroph. Division  

Alan Bridle Double Lobed AGN Page

AGN Research at Australia Teles. Nat. Facility 

Cambridge University AGN Research

Leeds University AGN Research

NRAO Green Bank

AGN Divulgation at CASS

AGN Research at Australia Telescope National Facility

Mannheim Particle Astrophysics Research

Chiang AGN Page

Perlman AGN Research

AGN at ESA

AGN at Observatoire de Paris

Shlosman AGN Page

AGN Divulgation and Research at MSSL London University

AGN Amateur Observer

AAVSO Discussion Group

Steinicke Extragalactic Page

AGN Research at PennState University

ASP Conf. Series 100 - Jet Workshop

X-Ray Astronomy at ISAS (Japan)

FITSIO Home Page

OSSE Home Page

CANGAROO Homepage

Grenoble LAOG AstroPlasma Research

Lightman Homepage

Begelman Homepage

Burbidge Homepage

Astro Fluid Dynamics at Leeds Univ

Wiita Homepage

Lovelace Homepage

Teukolsky Homepage

Peterson Homepage

Radio Astronomy at Brandeirs University

AGN course by Luc Binette

Kedziora-Chudczer IDV Variability Page 


Blazar Curiosities

The Great Blaze: a lyric by anonymous

The TeV Blazars: are Monsters of Sky?

An AGN Cartoon