UMBC Astrophysicists Eileen Meyer and Markos Georganopoulos have recently published an article in the journal Nature (along with colleagues from STScI, FIT and JHU), discussing recent observations of a jet from a super-massive black hole in the galaxy NGC 3862. Using 20 years of imaging with the Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists were able to track the motion of high-energy plasma in the jet, clearly visible by eye in a movie created from the four epochs of observation. They found that one bright ‘knot’ of plasma in the jet is in the process of colliding with a slower-moving knot just downstream. Colliding knots have long been theorized as a way to accelerate the particles which produce high-energy radiation in many astrophysical jets, but this is the first time such a collision has been observed. The paper appeared in the May 28th online edition of Nature. The UMBC Research News Item is available here. Original STScI/NASA release (with videos and images) here. Nature Publication here. The press release was also picked up by the BBC, LA times, and Time magazine, and many more online publications.