Microquasars in Our Galaxy

Microquasars are a recently discovered class of compact objects in our Galaxy, featuring some of the properties of the distant quasars, such as radio-emitting jets expanding at relativistic speed. As such, they are of primary importance as a 'local' laboratory to test the physics of quasars, taking advantage of the higher intensity and faster variability. In this paper we review the observational efforts carried out by BeppoSAX on the three superluminal sources in our Galaxy known to date, with particular emphasis on GRS 1915+105 on which the BeppoSAX Narrow Field Instruments spent the largest time.