We may have spotted jets driven by the Milky Way’s central black hole

Chandra Observatory

Some of the most luminous objects in the Universe are the jets produced by the supermassive black holes that reside at the center of nearly all galaxies. These jets use the energy from particles that have fallen into the black hole's accretion disk and rocket some of that matter out at nearly light speed. As these particles shed energy by emitting photons, they turn the jet into a fantastically bright object.

Studying these jets, however, is a real challenge, because most of them occur on galaxies far from our own. Since we've identified a supermassive black hole at the center of our own galaxy (Sgr A*), the obvious solution would be to study that. But that's been easier said than done. As the authors of a new study put it, "despite its virtue of proximity," the center of our own galaxy is a busy place, with lots of energetic objects. Unfortunately, the matter trapped by the black hole isn't one of them; the same authors describe the Milky Way's central black hole as "exceptionally underluminous."

As a result, astronomers have announced the discovery of jets from Sgr A* a total of seven times; most of these supposed jets don't point in the same direction, suggesting the majority of them are wrong. But an analysis of a huge trove of X-ray data from the Chandra Observatory, coupled with some observations in the infrared, have led a team of researchers to give the nod to one of the candidates: an X-ray feature with the catchy name G359.944-0.052.