Skip to main content

How James Webb will peer through a dusty cloud to study supermassive black hole

Centaurus A sports a warped central disk of gas and dust, which is evidence of a past collision and merger with another galaxy. It also has an active galactic nucleus that periodically emits jets. It is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky and only about 13 million light-years away from Earth, making it an ideal target to study an active galactic nucleus – a supermassive black hole emitting jets and winds – with NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope.
Centaurus A sports a warped central disk of gas and dust, which is evidence of a past collision and merger with another galaxy. It also has an active galactic nucleus that periodically emits jets. It is the fifth brightest galaxy in the sky and only about 13 million light-years away from Earth, making it an ideal target to study an active galactic nucleus – a supermassive black hole emitting jets and winds – with NASA’s upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; optical: Rolf Olsen; infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/Univ.Hertfordshire/M.Hardcastle

When the James Webb Space Telescope launches later this year, it’ll be the most complex space observatory in the world. Now, NASA has shared a glimpse into the kind of work that it will be able to perform in a profile of research that will be conducted on the nearby galaxy Centaurus A.

The galaxy Centaurus A is enormous and very active, with a warped central disk that was twisted out of shape when it collided with another galaxy. And its center is even more intriguing, as its supermassive black hole is spewing out jets of material with such energy that they travel beyond the bounds of the galaxy itself.

It’s this active galactic nucleus that scientists want to observe in more detail. But to do that, they need to look through the dust around the core to see the central region in more detail. That’s what the upcoming James Webb telescope will be able to do.

“There’s so much going on in Centaurus A,” explained Nora Lützgendorf, the lead researcher of the team which will study this galaxy, in a statement. “The galaxy’s gas, disk, and stars all move under the influence of its central supermassive black hole. Since the galaxy is so close to us, we’ll be able to use Webb to create two-dimensional maps to see how the gas and stars move in its central region, how they are influenced by the jets from its active galactic nucleus, and ultimately better characterize the mass of its black hole.”

To understand complex, active areas like galactic nuclei, it helps to look at them in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, such as X-ray and radio. Different wavelengths can detect different features, so looking across a range of wavelengths builds up a more complete picture. Webb’s infrared instruments, for example, can look through clouds of dust to see what lies beneath.

“Multi-wavelength studies of any galaxy are like the layers of an onion,” said fellow lead researcher Macarena García Marín. “Each wavelength shows you something different. With Webb’s near- and mid-infrared instruments, we’ll see far colder gas and dust than in previous observations, and learn much more about the environment at the center of the galaxy.”

Webb will be able to take not only images of this region, but also use an instrument called a spectrograph to find out the composition of the material as well. “When it comes to spectral analysis, we conduct many comparisons,” Marín said. “If I compare two spectra in this region, maybe I will find that what was observed contains a prominent population of young stars. Or confirm which areas are both dusty and heated. Or maybe we will identify emission coming from the active galactic nucleus.”

The researchers plan to create a map of this busy region, and from this map, they’ll be able to see how the gravity of the supermassive black hole affects material around it. From this, they’ll be able to more accurately pin down the black hole’s mass.

And this could be just the beginning of the discoveries. “The most exciting aspect about these observations is the potential for new discoveries,” Marín said. “I think we might find something that makes us look back to other data and reinterpret what was seen earlier.”

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
This peculiar galaxy has two supermassive black holes at its heart
The billion-year-old aftermath of a double spiral galaxy collision, at the heart of which is a pair of supermassive black holes.

As hard as it is to picture, with billions or even trillions of galaxies in the universe, entire galaxies can collide with each other. When that happens, one galaxy can be destroyed or the two can merge into one. But even in the case of galaxy mergers, the effects of the collision are often visible for billions of years afterward.

That's shown in a recent image taken by the Gemini South observatory, which shows the chaotic result of a merger between two spiral galaxies 1 billion years ago.

Read more
James Webb captures a gorgeous stellar nursery in nearby dwarf galaxy
This new infrared image of NGC 346 from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) traces emission from cool gas and dust. In this image blue represents silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. More diffuse red emission shines from warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars in the heart of the region. Bright patches and filaments mark areas with abundant numbers of protostars. This image includes 7.7-micron light shown in blue, 10 microns in cyan, 11.3 microns in green, 15 microns in yellow, and 21 microns in red (770W, 1000W, 1130W, 1500W, and 2100W filters, respectively).

A gorgeous new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning sight from one of our galactic neighbors. The image shows a region of star formation called NGC 346, where new stars are being born. It's located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.

The star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) was previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005, but this new image gives a different view as it is taken in the infrared wavelength by Webb instead of the optical light wavelength used by Hubble.

Read more
Zoom into an incredibly detailed James Webb image of the Orion nebula
A short-wavelength NIRCam mosaic of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the majesty of the gorgeous Orion nebula in tremendous detail. The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared an extremely high-resolution version of the image that you can zoom into to see the details of this stunning cloud of dust and gas which hosts sites of star formation where new stars are being born.

The full image is available to view in the ESASky application, where you can zoom in a compare images of the same target taken in different wavelengths. There's also a very large version of the image if you want to download and pursue it at your leisure.

Read more