Scientists may have solved 50-year mystery of the ‘Eye of Sauron,’ a galaxy billions of light-years away that seemed too slow to shine so bright

For more than half a century, a galaxy known as PKS 1424+240 has baffled astronomers. Billions of light-years away, it shines as one of the brightest blazars in the sky, powered by a supermassive black hole firing twin plasma jets into intergalactic space.

But one detail never added up: the jets appeared far too slow to explain the dazzling light and streams of high-energy neutrinos that Earth-based detectors were picking up.

Now, after 15 years of observations, scientists believe they have finally cracked the code.

What exactly is a blazar?

Blazars are among the most energetic objects in the universe. At its heart is a supermassive black hole that pulls in surrounding matter.

Instead of swallowing all of it, the black hole’s magnetic fields funnel some of the material into narrow jets that shoot out from its poles at nearly the speed of light.

From Earth, these objects look brightest when one of those jets happens to be aimed directly at us, a cosmic alignment that makes them appear to blaze with energy.

That’s why PKS 1424+240 earned the nickname “Eye of Sauron.”

The puzzle that wouldn’t go away

Astronomers first spotted PKS 1424 over 240 more than 50 years ago. Over time, they confirmed that it was unusually bright and a major source of high-energy neutrinos and gamma rays, emitting radiation consistent with superluminal jets.

But when scientists measured the apparent speed of its jets, they found it oddly sluggish. Instead of racing outward at relativistic speeds consistent with the extreme radiation, the jets seemed too slow, a paradox that cast doubt on how the galaxy could produce so much light.

15 years of patient observations

A research team led by Y. Y. Kovalev at the Max Planck Institute of Radio Astronomy conducted a study published in Astronomy & Astrophysics titled "Looking into the Jet Cone of the Neutrino-Associated Very High-Energy Blazar PKS 1424+240."

They explored the galaxy using the Very Long Baseline Array, a network of radio telescopes that spans across the globe.

Over 15 years, they tracked the polarization of the light coming from PKS 1424+240. Light polarization changes when it passes through magnetic fields, so by carefully mapping these patterns, astronomers could reconstruct the structure of the jet’s magnetic environment.

What they found

The results stunned the team. The polarization map revealed magnetic fields wrapped around the jet like a set of concentric rings, a near-perfect toroidal structure that had never been seen so clearly before.

This unique alignment explains the paradox. Because Earth is looking almost directly down the jet’s barrel, its brightness is amplified by more than 30 times. At the same time, projection effects create a visual trick: the plasma appears to crawl rather than race outward, even though it is moving at nearly the speed of light.

“It’s a classic optical illusion,” said co-author Jack Livingston, quoted by Sciencealart. “The alignment both boosts the brightness and makes the jet appear slower than it really is.”


The discovery confirms that blazars are capable of accelerating electrons and protons, making them powerful cosmic engines that can produce the high-energy neutrinos observed on Earth.