Astronomers just made a pretty wild discovery about the blazar PKS 1424+240. It’s a distant, blindingly bright active galactic nucleus (AGN) that’s powered by one enormous supermassive black hole.
After 15 years of watching this thing with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), researchers pulled off the sharpest image yet of its strange relativistic jet. They spotted a near-perfect toroidal magnetic field—a donut-shaped structure that might finally explain how these jets sling particles to such ridiculous energies.
This result doesn’t just open a window into jet formation. It also confirms that AGN like PKS 1424+240 pump out high-energy cosmic neutrinos, which is a big deal for multi-messenger astronomy.
What Makes PKS 1424+240 Unique
PKS 1424+240 falls into a rare, fascinating group of AGN called blazars. These are known for their jets of charged particles moving close to the speed of light—and those jets pretty much point right at us.
That head-on alignment causes a wild brightening effect called relativistic beaming. It’s why blazars rank among the brightest objects in the universe, even from billions of light-years away.
The “Eye of Sauron” Effect
This blazar picked up the nickname “Eye of Sauron” because its jet is almost perfectly aimed at Earth. The angle? Less than 0.6°, which is mind-blowingly precise and boosts its brightness by a factor of 30.
Even though it shines like it’s moving at breakneck speed, the jet’s structure actually shows a surprisingly slow apparent velocity. That’s not because the jet itself is slow, but because of the freakishly perfect alignment.
Revealing the Magnetic Blueprint
With the VLBA, astronomers used radio polarization to map the jet’s magnetic field in detail. Unlike the messy, tangled fields you find in many AGN, PKS 1424+240’s jet displays an almost perfect toroidal magnetic structure—think of a donut wrapping around the jet’s axis.
This arrangement matters. It gives us clues about how particles get flung to energies that dwarf anything we can pull off on Earth.
Tying Magnetic Fields to Particle Acceleration
The neat toroidal field hints that the jet could work like a cosmic particle accelerator, channeling energy into protons and electrons with surprising efficiency. Experiments and simulations have hinted for years that magnetic fields like these could be the main drivers behind such wild particle speeds.
Now, with PKS 1424+240, astronomers finally have sharp, visual proof of this process at work.
From Gamma Rays to Neutrinos
PKS 1424+240 is more than just a radio beacon. It also cranks out high-energy gamma rays and neutrinos.
Neutrinos are incredibly elusive—almost massless, barely interacting with anything, and usually slipping right through matter. Finding them here ties blazar jets to some of the universe’s most energetic events.
A Win for Multi-Messenger Astronomy
By lining up polarized radio signals with gamma-ray and neutrino detections, scientists have shown that blazars like PKS 1424+240 aren’t just about electrons. They also accelerate protons to extreme energies.
These protons can smash into surrounding stuff or radiation, creating high-energy neutrinos. Those neutrinos then zip across the cosmos, carrying clean information about where they came from.
The MOJAVE Program’s Role
This whole breakthrough owes a lot to the MOJAVE program (Monitoring Of Jets in Active galactic nuclei with VLBA Experiments). The program’s been gathering detailed AGN jet observations for decades.
By sticking with PKS 1424+240 for 15 years, the team uncovered the jet’s structure and magnetic layout—both key to figuring out what makes this blazar tick.
Looking Toward the Future
These findings will shape future studies that try to model jet formation and stability. Researchers also hope to better understand the link between AGN and high-energy cosmic rays.
Next-generation observatories are coming online soon. With more sensitive neutrino detectors and advanced radio arrays, astronomers can finally test whether the toroidal magnetic structure of PKS 1424+240 is unique or common among blazar jets.
PKS 1424+240 isn’t just a visual spectacle—it’s a cosmic laboratory. Because it lines up almost perfectly with Earth’s line of sight, and shows off such a clean magnetic structure, we get a rare, clear look into the heart of a powerful extragalactic accelerator.
Maybe it’s even a kind of roadmap for figuring out the energetic processes that shape our universe. The possibilities are exciting, even if there’s still a lot we don’t know.
Here is the source article for this story: The Eye of Sauron And An Optical Illusion Solve A Cosmic Puzzle