James Webb Telescope reveals a dazzling light show from the Milky Way’s black hole

The James Webb Space Telescope has made a groundbreaking discovery revealing a dazzling light show emanating from the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). This phenomenon is unlike anything seen before, with unpredictable bursts of light pulsing from the debris surrounding the black hole ¹.

The observations, made using Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), tracked the black hole for a total of 48 hours over the course of a year. What researchers found was astonishing – the accretion disk surrounding Sgr A* is emitting a constant stream of flares with no periods of rest. These flares vary in intensity and duration, ranging from brief, faint flickers lasting seconds to powerful, blinding eruptions occurring daily ².

*Unraveling the Mystery*

The research team, led by Farhad Yusef-Zadeh of Northwestern University, suspects that two separate processes are responsible for the short bursts and longer flares. Minor disturbances within the accretion disk likely generate the faint flickers, similar to solar flares. On the other hand, the longer, brighter flares may be caused by magnetic reconnection events, where two magnetic fields collide, releasing energy in the form of accelerated particles ¹.