Blazars are a category of active galactic nuclei that feature the emission of a jet pointing to the observer. We plan to perform a photometric measurement aimed at studying a possible variation of the jet: depending on the observed variations, one could discriminate among various models describing the mechanism of the jet emission.
Preliminary results have been shown at the National Congress of the Italian Physics Society in 2015 by Chiara Righi (who received the prize among the best presentations) and published in the conference proceedings and reported in the master degree thesis of Chiara Righi. As an example we show the observation of a candidate blazar of magnitude 20.3 along with the reference stars to be used for the differential photometry: even if very faint, the object could be isolated from the background with a large significance.
In collaboration with INAF-Osservatorio di Brera phenomenological and theoretical studies have been undertaken on blazars and in general on high-energy sources. The studies are reported in the theses of Jacopo Montaruli and Ilaria Viale. Ilaria Viale presented preliminary results at the National Congress of the Italian Physics Society in 2020 (receiving the mention for the best presentations): see the publication Ilaria Viale et al. Il Nuovo Cimento C 44 (2021).
A collaboration has also been initiated with INAF-Osservatorio di Brera, Università di Padova and Université Aix-Marseille on studies of galactic high-energy sources.