Using the MIRI instrument onboard of the James Webb Space Telescope, an international team of scientists made the first-ever detection of a mid-IR flare from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive massive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. In simultaneous radio observations, the team found a radio counterpart of the flare lagging behind in time. The results are published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters: First mid-infrared detection and modeling of a flare from Sgr A* (DOI).
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Image: © CfA/Mel Weiss; Artist’s conception of the mid-IR flare in Sgr A* (left: beginning; center: middle; right: end), 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.