James H. Matthews

The black hole in the binary system V4641 Sagittarii behaves like a giant blender. It sucks in matter from its companion star and flings it back into space in two narrow jets. These jets slam into the surrounding gas like a water jet hitting sand, gradually carving out a huge cavity around the hole.

At night, invisible bullets streak across the sky — cosmic rays. These are atomic nuclei accelerated to near-light speeds. The Galaxy's magnetic fields tangle their paths, making it hard to pinpoint where they were born.

Out in the distant cosmos, there are galaxies that astronomers have nicknamed 'little red dots': in images they appear as tiny reddish specks, even though they are mind-bogglingly far away. Their light looks red not because they are cold, but because the expanding universe stretches light waves.

Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies sometimes eject narrow streams of matter — jets that travel at nearly the speed of light. For a long time, astronomers could not say precisely how fast these jets are for different black holes.