According to a news release from NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope:

Astronomers identify the object as 3C 454.3, an active galaxy located 7.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. But even among active galaxies, it's exceptional.

"We're looking right down the barrel of a particle jet powered by the galaxy's supermassive black hole," said Gino Tosti at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Perugia, Italy. "Some change within that jet — we don't know what — is likely responsible for these flares."

Blazars, like many active galaxies, emit oppositely directed jets of particles traveling near the speed of light when matter falls toward their central supermassive black holes. What makes a blazar so bright in gamma rays is its orientation: One of the jets happens to be aimed straight at us.

Here's the above image, with 3C 454.3 circled:

Of course if it has a military application, you know DARPA thought of it first. Back in 2005 the feds funded research into 'XNAV', as they like to call it, to see if it could be used as a backup to GPS in case that system got jammed or went down during a time of war (do these guys ever think about anything other than war?).

But space scientists at PLANS think XNAV is the primary way for future spacecraft to navigate the stars. Using the system, robot spaceships could make their way safely and accurately through interstellar space without human intervention. It might pave the way for ultra-long missions to nearby stars and planets, while the human cargo snores peacefully away in hypersleep.

Source: PLANS conference website