Stephanie Pappas is a contributing writer for Live Science, covering topics ranging from geoscience to archaeology to the human brain and behavior.
The ultimate action-packed science and technology magazine bursting with exciting information about the universeEngaging articles, amazing illustrations & exclusive interviewsSagittarius A* is 4 million times the mass of the sun and sits 26,000 light-years away from Earth, according to. Simulations hint that flares happen when two magnetic field lines connect, releasing a burst of energy, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany said in a statement.
Until recently, though, astronomers had only observed these flares in short-wave visible light and long-wave radio singles — not in the middle part of the electromagnetic spectrum. "For over 20 years, we've known what happens in the radio and what happens in the near infrared, but the connection between them was never 100% clear or certain," study co-lead authorBut now, the JWST can detect this mid-infrared region — the part of the spectrum humans experience as heat. The space telescope orbits the sun nearly a million miles from Earth and has been making observations from that vantage point since 2022.
Artist’s conception of the mid-IR flare in Sgr A* , capturing the variability, or changing intensity, of the flare. The flare, which might be caused by magnetic reconnection, travels around the black hole while the electrons cool to lower energies causing the emission to become brighter at longer wavelengths relative to shorter wavelengths. If humans could see in the Mid-infrared, the flare would appear redder at the end of the flare than at the beginning.
Scientists discover 2 stars dancing around the Milky Way's black hole — and they could point to a type of planet never seen before"While our observations suggest that Sgr A*'s mid-IR emission does indeed result from synchrotron emission from cooling electrons, there's more to understand about magnetic reconnection and the turbulence in Sgr A*'s accretion disk," study co-lead author, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, said in the statement.
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