The flaring blazars of the first 1.5 years of the AGILE mission

Abstract: We report the AGILE observations and the results of the multiwavelength campaigns on seven flaring blazars detected by the mission: During two multiwavelength campaigns, we observed activity from two Flat Spectrum Radio Quasars of the Virgo region, e.g. 3C 279 and 3C 273 (the latter being the first extragalactic source simultaneously observed with the telescope and the hard X ray imager of the mission). Due to the large FOV of the AGILE/GRID instrument, we achieved an almost continuous coverage of the FSRQ 3C 454.3. The source showed flux above 10−6 photons/cm2/s () and showed day by day variability during all the AGILE observing periods. In the EGRET era, the source was found in high activity only once. An other blazar, PKS 1510-089 was frequently found in high activity. S5 0716+71, an intermediate BL Lac object, exhibited a very high activity and fast variability during a period of intense optical activity. We observed high activity from W Comae, a BL Lac object, and Mrk 421, a high energy peaked BL Lac object. For this source, a multiwavelength campaign from optical to TeV has been performed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]