Astronomers from around the world announced a major discovery last week that could help scientists better understand the birth of the universe and some of the most exotic objects in it, including black holes.

By linking a massive detector buried under the South Pole, a command center at Pennsylvania State University, advanced satellites, and several land-based observatories, a team of hundreds was able to pinpoint the first known cosmic source of a special kind of neutrino, a particle that passes through virtually all matter on Earth.

Using neutrinos marks the beginning of a new era of astrophysical research that doesn’t rely solely on light, said France Cordova, director of the National Science Foundation, in a statement. The findings were published in Science on Thursday.

For centuries, people have been “looking at the night sky, and they saw photons — which is light — hitting their eyes,” explained Drexel University assistant professor Naoko Kurahashi Neilson, who helped lead efforts to locate the source of the high-energy neutrinos.

Modern astronomy, too, “is all about looking at the universe with light,” she said. But light can be blocked, either by objects in space or by clouds here on Earth. And many of the most exotic cosmic objects don’t emit photons, making them difficult to study.

It turns out the first known source of high-energy neutrinos is one of the most recognizable constellations in the sky: Orion, the archer.

Just off Orion’s left shoulder, some 3.8 billion light-years away, floats a galaxy that is being sucked into a supermassive black hole. As that galaxy’s gas, dust, stars, and possible planets grind together, jets of x-rays, radio waves, and ultrahigh energy particles blast out.

On Sept. 22, 2017, a single high-energy neutrino banged into detectors buried more than a kilometer underground at the South Pole. That kick-started a flurry of activity in more than a dozen countries.