James Webb captures Jupiter’s sparkling aurora borealis
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of Jupiter’s aurora.
The James Webb Space Telescope has provided new evidence that sheds light on what scientists know about black holes.
Launched more than four years ago, the infrared observatory is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and was used to target a “supermassive black hole” in our neighboring galaxy, the Circinus Galaxy, about 13 million light-years away.
Data from the Webb Telescope, built through an international collaboration between Canadian, European and American space agencies, has helped researchers make new discoveries about what happens in and around black holes, researchers reveal in the January 13 issue of Nature Communications.
Previous telescopes were able to detect the excess infrared radiation emitted by black holes. But they lacked the determination to pinpoint its specific origins. According to NASA, scientists theorized that “superheated material” flowing out of a black hole produces the most infrared light.
The interior of a supermassive black hole is hotter than expected
The new Webb telescope observations, captured in July 2024 and March 2025, also include the clearest telescope images yet of the black hole’s surroundings, disproving previous theories.
What did the Webb telescope discover? In its description of the study, NASA said that almost all (87%) of the infrared radiation of the circus black hole’s hot dust comes from “the region closest to the black hole,” while less than 1% of the radiation comes from the hot dust outflow.
Analysis of the data shows that “our observations and models suggest that the preferred component[of the infrared light]is heated dust in the funnel that forms the inner surface of the donut-shaped ring around the black hole,” lead author Enrique López-Rodriguez, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of South Carolina, told USA TODAY.
López-Rodriguez said the rest of the measured infrared radiation “comes from warm dust in the host galaxy outside the influence of the central black hole.”
Scientists had suspected that the largest source of infrared radiation was the heated outflow emanating from the black hole, but “most of the infrared radiation comes from compact, dusty structures that feed the black hole, rather than from the outflow material,” the European Space Agency said in a study commentary.
These discoveries about the Circus Galaxy’s black hole could be a test for researchers studying other black holes, of which there are an estimated 100 million in the Milky Way alone, according to NASA.
Other black holes may reveal different findings. “Circinus is a typical active galaxy, but the family of active galaxies is very broad. To make general claims, we need to study all the different stages of active galaxies,” López-Rodriguez said.
The Webb telescope’s enhanced infrared capabilities will allow scientists to “obtain larger samples,” he added.
What is a circus galaxy black hole?
According to NASA, when a supermassive black hole like the one in the Circus Galaxy consumes gas and dust, a donut-shaped ring (called a torus) forms around the black hole. As material accumulates, it forms a vortex-like structure called an “accretion disk.” When matter swirls, it creates friction, increases heat, and emits infrared radiation.
Another recent discovery, published in the January 5 issue of Nature Astronomy, suggests that matter isn’t just sucked into black holes. (Note: Black holes don’t actually suck in matter; their gravity is so strong that they swallow anything that gets too close.)
A news release describing a three-year study of black holes in the Milky Way galaxy using NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station and the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa says black holes can either sling material “into space in concentrated jets or in giant winds.”
“What we are seeing can be described as an energetic tug-of-war…(event). When the black hole fires out a fast plasma jet, the X-ray wind weakens, and when the wind starts blowing again, the jet disappears,” Jiachen Jiang, lead author of the study and a physicist at the University of Warwick in the UK, said in a statement.
Throughout the past decade of black hole research, scientists have used infrared measurements to model the structure of black holes. In the case of the Circus Galaxy black hole, the infrared illumination from the black hole was so intense that astronomers were unable to identify the source of the excess radiation.
However, one of the Webb telescope’s four main instruments, the Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrometer (NIRISS), is equipped with an aperture masking interferometer that can capture higher contrast, higher resolution infrared data. “This allows us to see images twice as clearly,” study co-author Joel Sánchez Bermudez, an astrophysicist at the National University of Mexico, said in a NASA report.
Julien Girard, co-author of the paper and principal investigator at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said in the NASA report that the circus black hole is “the first time that the web’s high-contrast mode has been used to observe an extragalactic source.”
“We hope our work will encourage other astronomers to use aperture masking interferometry modes to study faint but relatively small and dusty structures near bright objects,” Girard said.
Mike Snyder is a national trends news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, and X, and email him at: mike snyder & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com.
