![]() This is important in studies of galaxies too far away for astronomers to see individual stars. The function tells astronomers how much light star populations produce. Ginsburg explains the survey could help astronomers get better estimates of something called the Initial Mass Function (IMF) too, which is the relative number of big to small stars that form. A* is a quiescent black hole and appears to have acquired most of its mass in the past," Rainer Schödel, an astronomer from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia in Spain and first author of the paper, told. Astronomers refer to Sgr A* as a 'quiescent' black hole, which means it is basically dormant - a clue in the story. A*.Īctive black holes emit large amounts of electromagnetic radiation, but Sgr A* appears to be relatively quiet on this front, suggesting it isn't consuming large volumes of material. The proposed multi-epoch observations of the Galactic Center should give astronomers a solid idea of how many stars are forming, and therefore the rate of growth of Sgr. Thus, because the presence of such gas is also a necessary ingredient for star formation, its reasonable to infer a relationship between the growth history of Sgr A*, and the rate of star formation in the Galactic Center. ![]() A*, affected our home galaxy's evolution.Īstronomers already know that massive, galactic black holes like this one grow mostly by feeding on gas that surrounds the holes themselves in plate-like shapes known as accretion disks. One of the biggest unresolved questions about the Milky Way surrounds how its black hole, Sgr. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC, STScI) What could we learn? This image shows invisible infrared and X-ray wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. The proposed multi-epoch survey would collect data on the Galactic Center at one, five and 10 year intervals. Infrared is longer in wavelength and lower in energy than visible light, making it invisible to humans.īut even still, one telescope wouldn’t capture the whole picture - which is why the team's proposal suggests using a number of other telescopes (old and new) to support the JWST's findings.Īccording to the paper, the survey is planned to include the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope, which are both already in service, as well as future telescopes like the Roman Space Telescope, the European Space Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope, and Japan’s JASMINE astrometry satellite. The light from these galaxies has stretched, or "redshifted" due to the continued expansion of the universe, where their light waves are moving towards the red end of the electromagnetic spectrum (where longer wavelengths are categorized). The JWST is also capable of making observations in longer wavelengths of infrared light, which it uses to observe galaxies in the early universe. Infrared wavelengths, however, can cross over to the other side, ultimately hitting the JWST's detectors. ![]() To the unaided eye, those regions just look like dark voids because we can only see visible light wavelengths, blocked by those dust veils. The JWST's Near-infrared Camera (NIRCam) and its system of filters, which allow astronomers to separate spectra of infrared light into wavelengths emitted by specific materials, makes the observatory uniquely capable of peering through these dense regions of dust. And, because it observes in the infrared, it can see through the dust. "JWST solves both of these problems," Ginsburg explained, "because it's a big telescope, it has excellent resolution and can separate stars from one another well. Plus, our view of the Galactic Center from Earth is obstructed by large clouds of dust. It's so dense, in fact, that smaller telescopes struggle to tell one star from another. "The center of our galaxy is challenging to observe for two reasons," Adam Ginsburg, an astronomer from the University of Florida who co-authored the white paper, told .įor one, Ginsburg says, the Galactic Center is full of stars.
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