{"id":419539,"date":"2026-01-20T22:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/419539\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T22:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T22:12:14","slug":"image-from-nasas-james-webb-space-telescope-shows-black-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/419539\/","title":{"rendered":"Image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows black hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope <\/a>by\u00a0NASA\u00a0gives a glimpse into a black hole within the Circinus Galaxy.<\/p>\n

The Circinus Galaxy is 13 million light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n

NASA said it\u2019s long been thought that a large source of infrared light closest to the supermassive active black hole were streams of super-heated matter that fire outward called outflows.<\/p>\n

Now, the new image from the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a>, combined with a new image from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope, suggests that the hot, dusty matter near the black hole is actually feeding the black hole, NASA said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the \u201890s, it has not been possible to explain excess infrared emissions that come from hot dust at the cores of active galaxies, meaning the models only take into account either the torus or the outflows, but cannot explain that excess,\u201d research lead author Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez of the University of South Carolina said.<\/p>\n

A torus is infalling gas and dust which accumulates into a donut-shaped ring around an active black hole<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As supermassive black holes gather matter from the inner walls of the torus, they form something called an accretion disk.<\/p>\n

\"CollageA new image from the James Webb Space Telescope paired with one from NASA\u2019s Hubble Space Telescope shows hot, dusty matter feeding the black hole. NASA, ESA, CSA, Enrique Lopez-Rodriguez, Deepashri Thatte, Alyssa Pagan<\/p>\n

NASA said this is similar to a whirlpool of water swirling around a drain. This disk grows hotter through friction, eventually becoming hot enough to emit light.<\/p>\n

This glowing matter can become so bright that seeing details within the galaxy\u2019s center with telescopes on the ground is challenging.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s made even harder due to the bright, concealing starlight within Circinus, NASA said.<\/p>\n

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In order to see into Circinus, the Webb Space Telescope needed its Aperture Masking Interferometer tool.<\/p>\n

NASA said the Aperture Masking Interferometer allows Webb to become an array of smaller telescopes working together as an interferometer, creating these interference patterns by itself.<\/p>\n

It does this by utilizing a special aperture made of seven small, hexagonal holes, which, like in photography, controls the amount and direction of light that enters the telescope\u2019s detectors, NASA said.<\/p>\n

With new data, the research team was able to construct an image from the central region\u2019s interference patterns.<\/p>\n

To do this, the team referenced data from previous observations to ensure their data from Webb was free of any errors.<\/p>\n

This resulted in the first extragalactic observation from an infrared interferometer in space and the sharpest image of a black hole\u2019s surroundings ever taken by Webb, NASA said.<\/p>\n

NASA said that while the mystery of the Circinus galaxy\u2019s excess emissions has been solved, there are billions of black holes in the universe that haven\u2019t been investigated.<\/p>\n

Read more about the photo and this research on NASA\u2019s website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope by\u00a0NASA\u00a0gives a glimpse into a black hole within the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[6626,1980,2300,718,79,193],"class_list":["post-419539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astronomy","tag-black","tag-earth","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}