Friday, May 15, 2026

Turbulence in the Milky Way's ISM Distorts Light from Distant Quasars

The left-hand side of this artist's illustration shows the distant quasar TXS 2005+403 as it really appears, with its bright accretion disk and its powerful astrophysical jets blasting radiation into the cosmos. The right-hand side shows how intervening turbulent gas blurs and distorts the light. New research has figured out exactly how that turbulence affects images of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. Image Credit: Melissa Weiss/CfA

We may be getting better images of the Milky Way's supermassive black hole in the future. Astronomers used 10 years of observations of a distant blazar to detect turbulence in the Milky Way's interstellar medium. This turbulence makes images of Sagittarius A-star blurry.



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