Roma-BZCAT: a multifrequency catalogue of blazars

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale A. Moro 2, 00185, Roma, Italy e-mail: enrico.massaro@uniroma1.it
² ASI Science Data Center, ASDC c/o ESRIN, via G. Galilei, 00044 Frascati, Italy
³ INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Monte Porzio Catone, Italy

Received: 8 May 2008
Accepted: 4 September 2008

Abstract

We present a new catalogue of blazars based on multifrequency surveys and on an extensive review of the literature. Blazars are classified as BL Lacertae objects, as flat spectrum radio quasars or as blazars of uncertain/transitional type. Each object is identified by a root name, coded as BZB, BZQ and BZU for these three subclasses respectively, and by its coordinates. This catalogue is being built as a tool useful for the identification of the extragalactic sources that will be detected by present and future experiments for X and gamma-ray astronomy, like Swift, AGILE, Fermi-GLAST and Simbol-X. An electronic version is available from the ASI Science Data Center web site at http://www.asdc.asi.it/bzcat.