The James Webb Space Telescope is giving us an exciting view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This emerging perspective is showing a steady dance of light and some dramatic flares as matter gets consumed by the black hole’s immense gravity.
Launched in 2021 and starting its observations in 2022, Webb is the first telescope to watch this area for long periods. This allows astronomers to notice patterns that were previously invisible. Instead of a quiet scene, they found the area buzzing with activity.
Researchers have detected a constant flickering of light from the accretion disk, which is a swirling mass of gas close to the black hole. This flickering indicates that gas is being pulled toward the event horizon, the point beyond which nothing escapes.
In addition to the steady flickering, they also spotted about one to three significant flares each day, along with smaller bursts in between. These bursts are similar to solar flares, where hot particles are shot into space, but they happen in a much more powerful environment.
According to astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, who led the study, the accretion disk is chaotic. As gas approaches the black hole, it becomes highly compressed and turbulent. It collides and merges due to strong magnetic fields, creating the flares we observe.
Black holes like Sgr A* are incredibly dense. Their gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape, making it hard to study them directly. Instead, observations focus on the surrounding materials. Sgr A* is about 4 million times the mass of our sun and sits roughly 26,000 light-years away from Earth.
This black hole, while active, is considered relatively calm compared to others in different galaxies. The findings are based on approximately 48 hours of data collected by Webb over a year, capturing continuous brightness changes around Sgr A*.
Scientists believe that about 90% of the material in the accretion disk falls into the black hole, while the rest is ejected back into space. The gas comes mainly from winds of nearby stars instead of a star that strayed too close.
Before Webb, astronomers could only observe Sgr A* for limited time spans, which made it difficult to get a complete picture. With Webb’s advanced near-infrared camera, they can collect data across different infrared wavelengths, leading to a more accurate understanding of this fascinating cosmic phenomenon.
This new technology provides a clearer and more detailed view of the black hole’s environment, which has been long sought after by scientists. The ongoing observations will surely shed more light on the mysteries of black holes and their interactions with space around them.
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