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There's A Supermassive Black Hole Hiding In This James Webb Image
By GEORGINA TORBET
The James Webb Space Telescope produced a striking image of the five galaxies of Stephan's Quintet, with the top one, called NGC 7319, host to a supermassive black hole. While gradually chomping its way through material that falls past its event horizon, this monster black hole with a mass 24 million times that of the sun indirectly gives off light.
Although black holes can’t be observed directly, scientists studied the gas around this one with the Webb's spectrography instruments. By seeing which wavelengths of light have been absorbed, scientists could see atomic hydrogen, iron ions that point to the areas with the hottest gas, and molecular hydrogen, which is cold and dense and fuels the black hole.
The researchers also used a spectrometer in the mid-infrared instrument, MIDI, to see how the gas around the black hole was being ionized by radiation from it, tracking the movement of gas both toward and away from the celestial body. "By using NIRSpec, scientists have gained unprecedented information about the black hole and its outflow," Webb scientists wrote.