LBA observations for project V578 semester 2019OCTS

Full description

Blazars are radio-loud active galactic nuclei whose jets point very close to the line of sight. High-resolution VLBI observations can provide the ultimate evidence for the blazar nature of a source, by revealing the compact, bright, high brightness temperature core with flat radio spectrum. Zywucka et al. (2018) selected the blazar candidates from the Magellanic Quasar Survey. The selection method based mainly on the optical variability and the radio-loudness of the sources. Using the infrared color-color selection for blazars derived from the data of the WISE satellite by Massaro et al. (2012) we found that 10 of the 27 WISE-detected sources are outside of the blazar gamma-ray strip. We propose to observe 7 sources from these list and additional 7 sources as a control sample which fall within the blazar strip. We want to compare the mas-scale properties of the two samples to asses whether (i) additional criteria is needed select blazar sources (ii) and if yes the WISE color-color criteria is able to improve the selection method. Optical emission and variability is thought to be dominated by the beamed jet in blazars while in non-beamed (and not radio-loud) sources it originates in the accretion disks thus governed by accretion processes. Therefore, if the physical mechanism causing the optical variability is intended to be studies the nature of the variable source is important to be ascertained.