Blazars

by Austin Cook Spring 2010 //*NASA artist rendition of a blazar//.
 * Blazars**

Hi, my name is Austin Cook. For this encyclopedia I have created a page that is all about **blazars**. What is a blazar? According to Universetoday.com, a blazar is "the [|core] of an active galaxy, where the galaxy is oriented face on, so a relativistic jet blasting out of the galaxy is oriented directly towards the Earth." Still unsure? Don't worry. Below, I have provided five links that can teach you everything there is to know about blazars. Enjoy.

[|Blazars] by Fraser Cain If you have no clue as to what a blazar is, this is a great article to start with. It’s short and quick to the point in providing essential and up-to-date information on understanding blazars. The writer holds the reader’s attention using rhetorical questions and figurative language, while still being clear and cohesive. The writer sacrificed details for brevity, leaving out some additional information that can provide better understanding. That being said, this article covers all of the important stuff while keeping it simple. I think that someone as young as a junior high student could get a grasp on blazars using this article.

[|Blazars –New Clues to the Most Violently Energetic Objects in the Universe] by Luke McKinney This article is also short and informative, with up-to-date information that is easy to understand. It does well in describing the processes that create the radiation emissions blazars produce. It also gives many details about the research done that taught us when we know today about blazars. This article succeeds in providing many interesting details, but it might be a little too much for someone who is not familiar with the science of black holes. I would probably recommend this to high school and college students.

[|Blazar] No author provided This is the dreaded Wikipedia article that many teachers despise. Because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, the reader should always take the information provided on this page with a grain of salt. That being said, this article is the most likely of all to be up-to-date, since it can be edited at any time. This article is also very thorough, providing many details that are neatly separated into specific paragraphs, making it easy to navigate. The reader can view articles about other related subjects by clicking on the many links provided. A person who knows nothing about blazars might want to look elsewhere first, because this article is full of scientific jargon that might be overwhelming for the common reader.

[|Multiwavelength Properties of Blazars] by C. Megan Urry This page goes into much detail about the radiation emitted from the jets of a blazar. This article is long, but it’s separated into multiple pages that are neatly outlined in a table of contents. Don’t view this article until you’ve grasped a basic understanding of blazars. It goes deep into the science behind light and astrophysics, using charts and mathematical equations as support. There’s a lot of information to take in, but the writing is simple enough for most people to follow. Be careful-- this article was written in 1998, so the information may be a little outdated. I think that college students would benefit the most from this article.

[|Campaign on the blazars 3C 273 and 3C 279] Edited by: Matthew Templeton This article provides information about a current project dedicated to learning more about blazars. It is interesting because it touches upon the still unsolved mysteries surrounding blazars. This article should be viewed last, because it would be very hard to understand otherwise. It also might be an arduous read, since it’s meant to be informational, rather the educational. It seems like it was meant for people already well versed in astronomy.