Scientists baffled by mysterious ‘Eye of Sauron’ deep space discovery

The fiery eyeball of the Lord of the Rings' book and film series, serves as a symbol of the Dark Lord’s omniscient power.

Now, in the real world, a deep space phenomenon has been found, mimicking the fictional force and staring down upon us.

Scientists have identified it as a cosmic jet, which is a highly powerful stream of plasma and energy emitted from celestial objects.

More specifically, this eye-shaped entity is called the PKS 1424+240 blazar, and is found billions of light years away.

A blazer is a type of galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole.

This blazar in particular has long since baffled astronomers and scientists alike, due to it being one of the brightest of its kind yet also one of the slowest moving.

This single-handedly combats the theory that only the fastest jets could be the ones emitting such brightness.

It took 15 years to gather a comprehensive photograph of the jet, which was achieved through stitching together ultra-precise radio observations from the Very Long Baseline Array - a system of 10 radio telescopes.

Lead author Yuri Kovalev, from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said that the team have “never seen anything quite like it - a near perfect toroidal magnetic field with a jet, pointing straight at us.

“Since the jet is aligned almost exactly in the direction of Earth”, he continued, “its high-energy radio emissions are dramatically amplified.”

“This alignment causes a boost in brightness by a factor of 30 or more”, co-author Jack Livingston said.

“At the same time, the jet appears to move slowly due to projection effects - a classic optical illusion.”

Radio signals helped show the team that the structure is likely a spiral or doughnut-shaped, which helps the particles accelerate to extreme energies.

The findings were published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.