In a galaxy far, far away within the Draco (Dragon) constellation, an international team has, for the first time, observed plasma jets forming in real time and shooting out at relativistic speeds, perpendicular to the plane of a black hole’s event horizon. Plasma jets, composed of ionized matter, are a subset of astrophysical jets—energetic, narrow beams of matter and radiation ejected from various objects, primarily black holes, along their axis of rotation.

These plasma jets were observed in the Milky Way’s gravitationally captured satellite, the Draco Dwarf Galaxy, located 270 million light-years from Earth. The Draco Dwarf Galaxy is home to a black hole that apparently has a white dwarf star companion. A likely scenario is that the white dwarf was once a companion to a much larger star that evolved faster, went supernova, and collapsed into a black hole. Today, the black hole is possibly cannibalizing material from the white dwarf, potentially leading to the plasma jets observed by researchers.

Source: Astronomers observe real-time formation of black hole jets by UMBC, 2025. Graphic: Black Hole Outflows from Centaurus A, ESO, 2009.