An international team of astronomers have employed one of the Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) at the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) to observe a distant blazar known as OP 313. Results of the observational campaign, published May 26 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the behavior and nature of this object.

Blazars are extremely compact quasi-stellar objects (quasars) associated with supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centers of active, giant elliptical galaxies. They are the most luminous and extreme subclass of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The characteristic features of blazars are highly collimated relativistic jets oriented very close to our line of sight.

Based on their optical emission properties, astronomers generally divide blazars into two classes: flat-spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) that feature prominent and broad optical emission lines, and BL Lacertae objects (BL Lacs), which do not.