NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has observed the most detailed images yet of the chaotic events unfolding around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The telescope captured a steady flickering of light and occasional bright flares as material is drawn inward by the black hole’s enormous gravitational pull.
The observations, based on 48 hours of data, revealed a constant flickering of light from the swirling disk of gas surrounding the black hole – called an accretion disk. This flickering appears to be emanating from material very close to the event horizon, the point of no return beyond which everything is dragged into oblivion.
The research team, led by astrophysicist Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, observed a chaotic region filled with turbulence, where gas gets compressed under extreme gravity. The team detected occasional flares, similar to solar flares, but occurring at a vastly higher energetic level.
Sgr A*, the black hole in question, is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth and has roughly 4 million times the mass of our sun. While it’s considered relatively quiescent, the events observed around Sgr A* are dramatic, providing insight into how black holes interact with their surrounding environments.
The James Webb Space Telescope offers advanced sensitivity and allowed for continuous measurements of the brightness around the black hole, providing a more complete picture than previous observations from ground-based telescopes or space-based Hubble.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/science/webb-telescope-observes-violence-around-milky-ways-central-black-hole-2025-02-18