When the Event Horizon Telescope takes another look at Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, next year, it will have the help of the James Webb Space Telescope.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is currently finishing preparations for observations, and is expected to release its first full-color scientific images on July 12, officially entering a series of scientific missions. In the first year of observation, the Webb Space Telescope will cooperate with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), tentatively scheduled to spend about 25 hours in April 2023 to observe Sagittarius A*, and collect infrared data to compare with EHT’s radio wave data to make it easier to determine When a bright flare occurs, resulting in a clearer overall image of the area.
Sagittarius A* is a difficult celestial body to study. In addition to observing all the common limitations of black holes, it will suddenly shoot out particles at speeds close to the speed of light. These bright flares may occur 4 to 5 times a day, essentially like a firework show that lasts for half an hour , and sometimes one after another, aside from the fact that the mechanism of the flare itself remains a mystery, it also affects the EHT telescope’s ability to detect other signals used to image the black hole.
The addition of the Webb Space Telescope will bring benefits. Because it is located at the L2 Lagrangian point of the Sun-Earth system 1.5 million kilometers away from the earth, it is not disturbed by the atmosphere, and the instrument is also lowered to extremely low temperature. It can collect 2 different types of infrared light data at the same time. Just continuous observations should allow scientists to distinguish when a flare occurs.
Scientists expressed that the collaboration between the Webb telescope and the EHT telescope will provide more information on the flares caused by black holes, thereby providing new insights into solar flares or plasma physics.
The research team also emphasized that the Webb telescope may not be able to capture the flare, after all, it is a black hole that can do whatever it wants, but it is bound to obtain other interesting observations, and this also means that the imaging effect will be very good.
(Source of the first image: NASA)
Further reading:
New technological knowledge, updated from time to time