An international team has identified the first convincing example of a microblazar in the Milky Way, a black-hole binary system whose powerful jet is directed almost towards Earth.
The system, located about 12,000 light-years away, consists of a black hole orbiting a massive star every 11.38 days. Material falling towards the black hole produces powerful jets travelling at around 75% of the speed of light. The discovery combines observations across multiple wavelengths and with several radio facilities.
High-resolution radio observations with the European VLBI Network (EVN), including e-MERLIN, revealed a one-sided jet closely aligned with our line of sight. Together with Gaia astrometry, these observations established that the radio jet originates from the stellar system rather than from an unrelated background source. Complementary observations with MeerKAT revealed a much larger radio structure extending for around 100 light-years, showing the impact of the jet on its surrounding environment.
The discovery confirms a type of system predicted more than three decades ago and provides a nearby laboratory for studying relativistic jets and their interaction with the interstellar medium.
Read more: e-MERLIN news | SARAO press release | Research paper
Image Credit: Diagram of the system IRAS 18293-0941, showing where the radio emission and Gamma ray emission arise from. Diagram credit: Benito Marcote (JIVE/ASTRON), based off the results of Martí et al 2026.