The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy may not be as voracious as the gas-gobbling monsters that astronomers have seen farther out in the Universe, but new findings from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveal that its surroundings are flaring with fireworks. JWST's readings in two near-infrared wavelengths have documented cosmic flares that vary in brightness and duration. Researchers say the accretion disk of hot gas surrounding the black hole, known as Sagittarius A*, throws off about five or six big flares a day, and several smaller bursts in between.
The observations are detailed today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters . "In our data, we saw constantly changing, bubbling brightness. And then boom! A big burst of brightness suddenly popped up.
Then, it calmed down again," study lead author Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University in Illinois said in a news release . "We couldn't find a pattern in this activity. It appears to be random.
The activity profile of this black hole was new and exciting every time that we looked at it." Yusef-Zadeh and his colleagues observed Sagittarius A* using JWST's Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, for a total of 48 hours, broken up into eight- to 10-hour increments over the course of a year. They expected to see flares, but they didn't expect the black hole's surroundings to be as active as they are.
The researchers suggest that two separate processes are sparking the light show. The smaller flares may be .