Kinematics of Parsec-Scale Jets of Gamma-Ray Bright Blazars at 43 GHz during Ten Years of the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR Program

Understand

We analyze the parsec-scale jet kinematics from 2007 June to 2018 December of a sample of $\gamma$-ray bright blazars monitored roughly monthly with the Very Long Baseline Array at 43 GHz under the VLBA-BU-BLAZAR program.

• We implement a novel piece-wise linear fitting method to derive the kinematics of 521 distinct emission knots from a total of 3705 total intensity images in 22 quasars, 13 BL Lacertae objects, and 3 radio galaxies.
• Apparent speeds of these components range from $0.01c$ to $78c$, and 18.6\% of knots (other than the "core") are quasi-stationary.
• One-fifth of moving knots exhibit non-ballistic motion, with acceleration along the jet within 5 pc of the core (projected) and deceleration farther out.