Astronomers capture strange flares at the heart of our galaxy and the findings are disturbing

When NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Day 2021 they hoped that the ground-breaking mission would help uncover new corners of our universe.

The JWST is the largest telescope in space and has already proved a valuable addition to the fields of astronomy and cosmology. This week researchers announced a new insight from the telescope, a close-up view of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

Most galaxies are formed around a supermassive black hole and ours is no different. Scientists believe that they play an important role in the formation and evolution of galaxies but they remain mysterious.

The Webb telescope has broken new ground by recording a constant stream of flares coming from Sagittarius A* at the heart of the Milky Way. The light patterns emanate from the accretion disk, a swirling belt of dust and gas that spins around the black hole. This could give researchers important insights about the role that black holes play in the universe.

“In our data, we saw constantly changing, bubbling brightness,” lead study author Farhad Yusef-Zadeh explained. “And then boom! A big burst of brightness suddenly popped up. Then, it calmed down again. 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.”

“Flares are expected to happen in essentially all supermassive black holes, but our black hole is unique,” Yusef-Zadeh continued. “It is always bubbling with activity and never seems to reach a steady state. We observed the black hole multiple times throughout 2023 and 2024, and we noticed changes in every observation. We saw something different each time, which is really remarkable.”

The JWST used it’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to observe the movements around Sagittarius A* in ten-year periods across the course of a year. It’s thought that the flares could be caused by two distinct processes, each producing a different visual effect.

Yusef-Zadeh suggests that the fainter, longer bursts could be the result of disturbances within the accretion disk. The brighter, shorter flares may occur when turbulence compresses plasma around the black hole and sparks temporary bursts of light radiation.

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