Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2026

30 ASTRO PUBLISHING national team led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithson- ian (CfA) directly measured the ti- ny, turbulence-driven “ripples” im- printed on the quasar’s radio signal as it passes through a particularly chaotic region of the Milky Way. TXS 2005+403 is a bright, compact blazar located about 10 billion light- years away behind the Cygnus re- gion, where plasma clouds create some of the strongest known inter- JULY-AUGUST 2026 VLBA maps turbulent “weather” in the Milky Way by National Radio Astronomy Observatory A stronomers using the U.S. National Science Founda- tion’s Very Long Baseline rray (NSF VLBA), operated by the NSF National Radio Astronomy Ob- servatory (NSF NRAO), have made the first clear, radio-wavelength de- tection of how turbulent gas in our own Galaxy distorts light from a dis- tant quasar. By analyzing nearly a decade of NSF VLBA observations of the quasar TXS 2005+403, an inter-