Statistical studies indicate that the 271 point sources of high-energy gamma rays belong to two groups : a Galactic population and an isotropic extragalactic population .
Many unidentified extragalactic sources are certainly blazars , and it is the intention of this work to uncover gamma-ray blazars missed by previous attempts .
Until recently , searches for blazar counterparts to unidentified EGRET sources have focused on finding AGN that have 5-GHz radio flux densities S _ { 5 } near or above 1 Jy .
However , the recent blazar identification of 3EG J2006-2321 ( S _ { 5 } = 260 mJy ) and other work suggest that careful studies of weaker flat-spectrum sources may be fruitful .
In this spirit , error circles of 4 high-latitude unidentified EGRET sources have been searched for 5-GHz sources .
The gamma-ray sources are 3EG J1133+0033 , 3EG J1212+2304 , 3EG J1222+2315 , and 3EG J1227+4302 .
Within the error contours of each of the four sources are found 6 radio candidates ; by observing the positions of the radio sources with the 0.81-m Tenagra II telescope it is determined that 14 of these 24 radio sources have optical counterparts with R < 22 .
Eight of these from two different EGRET sources have been observed in the B , V , and R bands in more than one epoch and the analysis of these data is ongoing .
Any sources that are found to be variable will be the objects of multi-epoch polarimetry studies .