An international team led by the Universidad de Jaen announced the discovery of IRAS 18293−0941, the first microblazar confirmed within the Milky Way, with a relativistic jet pointed almost directly along Earth’s line of sight. The stellar system, located approximately 12,000 light-years from Earth, pairs a compact stellar-mass black hole with a companion star in an alignment previously observed only in remote galaxies.

Official statements released on Tuesday (22) by the Universidad de Jaen and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory detailed the identification after decades of searching for this geometric alignment. “Everything about IRAS 18293−0941 was hiding in plain sight. It sits behind so much dust that it is essentially invisible in ordinary optical images. It was catalogued decades ago and then more or less forgotten,” said Josep Marti, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the Universidad de Jaen and lead author of the study.

Orbital dynamics behind the stellar-mass black hole system

The system consists of a black hole of approximately 10 solar masses locked in a close mutual orbit with a massive, hot companion star. The two bodies complete a full orbital cycle every 11.38 days. As they circle each other, the black hole strips gaseous material from the outer layers of the star through intense gravitational forces, drawing the matter into an accretion structure.

Portions of this captured matter escape the black hole before crossing the event horizon, channeled toward the magnetic poles and launched into space as twin relativistic jets travelling at approximately three-quarters of the speed of light. Because one of these jets points almost directly toward Earth, relativistic beaming amplifies its radiation, producing the signature characteristics of a microblazar.

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Radio interferometry and space data confirm the jet alignment

Astronomers first detected subtle periodic variations in the light coming from the system’s companion star, which pointed to the gravitational influence of the orbiting black hole. Follow-up observations conducted at radio wavelengths revealed a single visible jet oriented toward the observer, while the opposing jet pointed directly away from Earth and remained obscured to direct optical observation.

To eliminate the possibility that the radio jet belonged to a background active galactic nucleus lying along the same line of sight, scientists combined high-resolution interferometric data from the European VLBI Network with precise stellar astrometry from the Gaia space telescope. The measurements proved that the jet shares the precise position and movement of the binary star within our galaxy.

“This was the moment the result became solid. The resolution achieved by the EVN position together with the known position of the star from the Gaia satellite confirmed it: the jet belongs to the stellar system,” said Benito Marcote, astrophysicist at the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy.

Interstellar bubble reveals cosmic particle acceleration

Although the receding jet cannot be viewed along the line of sight, its physical interaction with the surrounding interstellar medium became visible through observations from the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa. The radio maps exposed an interstellar gas bubble measuring roughly 100 light-years in diameter, carved out by the momentum of the outgoing plasma beam.

Where the invisible jet collides with dense molecular clouds, it forms an energetic hot spot that generates ultra-high-energy gamma rays. Calculations indicate that the jet carries roughly 500,000 times the total radiation output emitted by the Sun, transforming the collision boundary into a powerful natural particle accelerator.

“The elegance is that the accelerator engine and the target are two different objects, tens of parsecs apart. The jet does the accelerating. The cloud does the shining,” said Pedro Luis Luque Escamilla, professor at the Universidad de Jaen and co-author of the study.

Key technical parameters of IRAS 18293-0941

• Distance from Earth: approximately 12,000 light-years
• Orbital period: 11.38 days
• Estimated mass of the black hole: 10 solar masses
• Width of the interstellar bubble mapped by MeerKAT: 100 light-years
• Energy carried by the relativistic jet: 500,000 times solar radiation
• Velocidade do plasma ejetado: cerca de três quartos da velocidade da luz.

🛎️ It's quiz time! This glittering field contains the highly evolved star IRS 3, which astronomers found to be shedding dust into its surroundings ☁️ despite it being near the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*! pic.twitter.com/F2LOXs510Q— ESA Webb Telescope (@ESA_Webb) September 23, 2026

Decades of theoretical predictions verified in our galaxy.

Microquasars, which are binary systems in the Milky Way that eject jets of particles, have been documented by astronomers for decades through objects such as SS 433 and GRS 1915+105. However, a microblazar requires an extremely rare geometric orientation, where the narrow plasma cone points almost directly at the observer, mimicking the structure of extragalactic blazars powered by supermassive black holes millions of times more massive.

The existence of microblazars in the Milky Way remained a purely theoretical concept for about 30 years, without direct empirical evidence. The observed interaction between the jet of IRAS 18293−0941 and local molecular gas provides direct evidence of how galactic black holes can act as sources of extreme cosmic rays, known to physicists as PeVatrons.

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Scientific peer review process and future publication

The object was originally recorded on January 1, 1983, by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite during an infrared sky survey, remaining unstudied for decades beneath obscuring dust lanes. The research group deposited their findings in the arXiv public preprint repository on September 1, 2026.

Following peer review, the paper was officially accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics under the title “A galactic microblazar as a potential ultra-high-energy particle accelerator.” The exact date on which the final, fully paginated study will appear in the print edition of the journal has not yet been confirmed.