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Session 5 - High Luminosity AGN.
Display session, Monday, June 10
Tripp Commons,

[5.07] Multi-Epoch VLBA Observations of Gamma-Ray Bright Blazars

A. P. Marscher (Boston Univ.), W. Xu, A. E. Wehrle (IPAC)

We have been monitoring the sub-milliarcsecond scale structure of a number of gamma-ray bright blazars with the VLBA at wavelengths of 1.3 since November 1993 and, for some, at 0.7 cm since January 1995. At these short wavelenghts, all of the blazars have dominant, unresolved (< 0.2 milliarcsec) cores. Some of the jets have wide apparent opening angles, probably due to projection effects. In a few cases, no jet is apparent at dynamic ranges of 100:1 or better.

Some of the jet components have not moved relative to the core during the course of our monitoring thus far, while others show apparent superluminal motion. The extrapolated epochs of zero separation of the moving components and the cores will be compared with the times of observed gamma-ray flares.

This work is part of a larger collaboration led by R.C. Hartman (NASA/GSFC). It is supported in part by NASA through Compton Gamma Ray Observatory guest investigator grants.

Program listing for Monday