Blazars are fascinating astrophysical sources that are playing an increasingly important role in modern astrophysics. Because of their extreme properties, such as the ability to emit highly variable radiation over a wide range of wavelengths, from radio waves to gamma-rays, blazars are believed to be powered by a relativistic jet of matter that is emitted from the vicinity of a supermassive black hole and points in the direction of the Earth. Blazars are also strongly suspected to emit neutrinos and cosmic rays, making them important targets for multi-messenger observations that can provide a more complete picture of the Universe.
Although about 6,000 blazars have been identified to date, this number appears relatively insignificant when compared to the vast number of stars detected within our Galaxy alone, which exceeds 1.5 billion according to the space mission Gaia. This means that blazars are quite rare and therefore difficult to find in a sky that is crowded by stars and other celestial sources. The number of known blazars is expected to grow significantly in the coming years as more surveys of the high-energy sky are carried out and new observatories become operational. For instance, the SRG/eRosita X-ray sky survey is expected to detect well over 100,000 blazars, while upcoming high-energy gamma-ray observatories like CTA and multi-messenger facilities like IceCube, KM3NeT, Baikal-GVD, and P-ONE will contribute to the detection of the most extreme ones. Identifying and studying all of these sources will pose a challenge that demands the combined efforts of numerous scientists, as well as the possible active participation of citizen scientists and students using tools like Firmamento.
Firmamento
Firmamento is a web-based and mobile-friendly platform dedicated to blazars and multi-messenger emitters. It provides effective access to classical and recently released multi-frequency astronomical data, enables users to visualize images from a broad range of radio, infrared, optical, UV, and high-energy surveys, and offers machine learning and other scientific software for characterizing the data.
Usage statistics at a glance
Firmamento has been successfully used by citizen researchers, participants and professional researchers since its launch. Check out the stats:
Resources
Blazars
Have you heard of blazars before? If not, fear not. Check out our resouces on blazars. We have collected all the necessary content that you require to have a complete understanding of this cosmological item.
Artistic view of an active galaxy (blazar) and its multi-wavelength and multi-messenger emission. Credit: E. Ampezzi, B. Del Piccolo, C. Schiavo (Liceo Artistico Modigliani, Padova) and E. Prandini (University of Padova).
Acknowledgements
Contributions
The “Firmamento” web tool has been developed as a collaborative effort between the Center for Astro, Particle, and Planetary Physics (CAP3 - Andrea Macciò and Francesco Arneodo) and the Citizen Researcher initiative (Research Public Engagement - Nouf Al Hamly and Rawdha Al Mansoori) of the New York University, Abu Dhabi. The code was written by Dhurba Tripathi with the supervision of Paolo Giommi and Adriano Di Giovanni. The main scientific software components around which the Firmamento tool was designed consists of “Aladin lite” , developed at Strasbourg astronomical Data Center (CDS), and “VOU_BLazars” , a tool based on Virtual Observatory (VO) standards, that was produced as part of the Open Universe initiative by Yu-Ling Chang, Carlos Brandt and Paolo Giommi. Goffredo Puccetti of NYUAD contributed to the project by proposing the site name and designing the logo. Special thanks are due to the IT people at NYUAD for their support in the setup of the Firmamento server at NYUAD.