What we talk about when we talk about blazars?
Abstract
After the discovery of powerful relativistic jets from Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies, and the understanding of their similarity with those of blazars, a problem of terminology was born. The word blazar is today associated to BL Lac Objects and Flat-Spectrum Radio Quasars, which are somehow different from Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies. Using the same word for all the three classes of AGN could drive either toward some misunderstanding, or to the oversight of some important characteristics. I review the main characteristics of these sources, and finally I propose a new scheme of classification.
- Publication:
-
Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences
- Pub Date:
- July 2017
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1705.10166
- Bibcode:
- 2017FrASS...4....6F
- Keywords:
-
- relativistic jet;
- Blazar;
- quasar;
- BL Lac object;
- Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxy;
- black hole;
- neutron star;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 21 pages, 4 figures. Proceedings of the Conference "Quasars at All Cosmic Epochs" (Padova, Italy, April 2-7, 2017). Submitted to Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Science (Special Issue)