A team of astronomers has captured the most detailed image yet of a powerful jet blasting out from the supermassive black hole at the heart of blazar OJ 287, revealing evidence that this object could be part of the most extreme binary black hole system ever detected.
Blazar OJ 287 is a type of quasar viewed almost directly along its jet, making it appear brighter than most other cosmic objects. Located about four billion light-years away, the galaxy has been monitored for around 150 years, uncovering two distinct cycles: one lasting roughly 60 years and another repeating every 12 years.
Scientists believe the shorter cycle is caused by a second black hole, roughly 150 million times the mass of the sun, orbiting an even larger primary black hole estimated to weigh in at a staggering 18.35 billion solar masses. This interaction briefly transforms OJ 287 into a double quasar as the secondary black hole forms its own temporary accretion disk and jet.
The most recent breakthrough came through an unprecedented radio observation of OJ 287, which revealed that the jet is not straight but bent at three distinct points. The team used a network of telescopes to resolve a region just one-third of a light-year across, effectively creating a virtual telescope five times the diameter of Earth.
The resulting image showed that the jet’s orientation shifts by about 30 degrees close to its origin, likely due to the gravitational influence of the second black hole. This gravitational tug could explain the jet’s unusual precession and even its violent outbursts. A shock wave detected within the jet was found to emit an intense stream of gamma rays.
The galaxy is now being considered an ideal candidate for further research into merging black holes and associated gravitational waves. While the two massive black holes in OJ 287 are expected to merge eventually, their slow inspiral is likely generating faint, long-wavelength gravitational waves that are beyond the reach of current detectors. Future missions like the European Space Agency’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), expected to launch in the mid-2030s, could enable scientists to directly detect the merger of supermassive black holes such as those in OJ 287.
Source: https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/08/bizarre-blazar-powerful-black-hole-duo