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Fermi LAT Gamma-Ray Blazar Classification Catalog

Metadata Updated: April 10, 2026

This database table contains a catalog of classifications for blazar candidates of uncertain type (BCU) detected by the Fermi Large Area Telescope gamma-ray instrument. These classifications have been determined by an Artificial Neural Network machine learning method. The aim of the authors' study was to develop an optimized version of this Artificial Neural Network machine learning method for classifying these blazar candidates. The final result of this study increased the classification performance by about 80% with respect to the method previously used for the classification of uncertain blazars in Chiaro et al. (<a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016MNRAS.462.3180C">2016MNRAS.462.3180C</a>, <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/MNRAS/462/3180/">CDS Cat. J/MNRAS/462/3180</a>), leaving only 15 unclassified blazars out of 573 blazar candidates of uncertain type listed in the Fermi LAT 4-Year Source Catalog. Looking beyond the gamma-ray features of blazars, interesting information can be obtained from a multiwavelength study of the sources and particularly from X-ray and radio flux. In this study the authors tested the possibility to use those two parameters to improve the performance of the network. They did not consider any optical spectroscopy data because, when considering uncertain sources, optical spectra are very often not available or not sufficiently descriptive of the nature of the source. The gamma-ray flux was obtained by adding five time-integrated fluxes in five bands (0.1-0.3, 0.3-1, 1-3, 3-10, 10-100 GeV) from the <a href="/W3Browse/fermi/fermi3fgl.html">3FGL Catalog</a> (Acero et al. <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJS..218...23A">2015ApJS..218...23A</a>, <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJS/218/23/">CDS Cat. J/ApJS/218/23</a>). Radio and X-ray data were obtained from the Fermi LAT 4-Year AGN Catalog 3LAC (Ackermann et al. <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015ApJ...810...14A">2015ApJ...810...14A</a>, <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/ApJ/810/14/">CDS Cat. J/ApJ/810/14</a>). Radio fluxes used were measured at frequencies of 1.4 and 0.8 GHz; the X-ray fluxes were measured in the 0.1-2.4keV range. The complete list of 567 classified BCUs is presented in this table in which sources are ordered by increasing likelihood of a source being a BL Lac. This database table was ingested by the HEASARC in May 2023 based upon the <a href="https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/ftp/cats/J/MNRAS/490/4770">CDS Catalog J/MNRAS/490/4770</a> file table1.dat. This is a service provided by NASA HEASARC .

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: See this page for license information.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026

Metadata Source

Harvested from NASA Data.json

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date April 11, 2025
Metadata Updated Date April 10, 2026
Publisher High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center
Maintainer
Identifier ivo://nasa.heasarc/fermilblaz
Data Last Modified 2026-04-06
Category Astrophysics
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 026:00
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b106ede6-05eb-49c2-818a-ad963d5c854d
Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
Homepage URL ivo://nasa.heasarc/fermilblaz
License https://www.usa.gov/government-works
Program Code 026:000
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash aec1457afd105811aef5b9f8afd96b81012afd2d57048d47d3063cabfe920eba
Source Schema Version 1.1

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