Precessing microblazars and unidentified gamma-ray sources

M. M. KAUFMAN BERNADÓ; G. E. ROMERO; I. F. MIRABEL

ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS

EDP Sciences

Lugar: Les Ulis Cedex A; Año: 2002 vol. 385 p. 10 - 13

0004-6361

The recent discovery by Paredes et al. (\cite{Paredes}) of a persistent microquasar that is positionally coincident with an unidentified gamma-ray source has open the possibility that other sources in the Third EGRET Catalog could be interpreted as microquasars as well. In this letter we show that some variable unidentified EGRET sources in the galactic plane could be produced by faint, otherwise undetected microquasars with precessing jets. When the jet points towards the observer, gamma-ray emission resulting from upscattered stellar photons could be detectable yielding a variable source with weak or undetectable counterpart at longer wavelengths. Strategies for detecting these ``microblazars'' with forthcoming satellites are briefly discussed.