User:Markarian421

My actual name is Brian Lee. I have a Ph.D. in physics and I've paid the bills working in astrophysics and designing and building scientific instrumentation. (A few of the projects I've worked on include ROTSE, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the Nearby Supernova Factory.) My hobbies include archeology and photography, mostly at the same time, and I'm probably equally bad at both. If that's not enough, you can find out everything you want to know and much, much more at BCLee.Net.

Markarian 421 is a galaxy which hosts a particular kind of active galactic nucleus (AGN) called a BL Lacertae object, or a blazar. It's one of the rare ones close enough that we can see very high energy (TeV) gamma-rays from it before they combine with CMB photons and become something else that never reaches us. As a graduate student I almost worked on a project that looked into such things, but got distracted building robots to watch exploding stars instead. Since there is no article on Markarian 421, I suppose I should write one. (Edit: thre is now an article on Markarian 421. I did not write it.)