A new class of extragalactic objects
Monday, October 29, 2012 - 10:01
in Astronomy & Space
A blazar is a galaxy with an intensely bright central nucleus containing a supermassive black hole, much like a quasar. The difference is that a blazar can emit light with extremely high energy gamma rays that are sometimes over a hundred million times more energetic than the highest energy X-rays that the Chandra X-ray Observatory studies. The overall emission of a blazar also varies dramatically with time and all known blazars are bright at radio wavelengths.