James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have astronomers on the brink of solving another long-standing astronomical mystery: how do supermassive black holes feed?

Astronomers from the Université de Montréal led an international team in the new research, reported in a recent paper in The Astrophysical Journal, which presents the clearest images ever recorded of gaseous filaments connecting a galaxy’s atmosphere to the rotating disk that the supermassive black hole feeds on.

The team’s analysis of the data paves the way toward understanding how black holes consume matter, a mystery that has stumped astronomers for decades.

Strange Black Hole Feeding

“JWST observations are offering us thousands of new facts and measurements, and I can report it’s a lot to absorb,” said co-author Megan Donahue, MSU University Distinguished Professor of physics and astronomy. “We are all working together to solve the astrophysics questions about how these black holes get their fuel and how they interact with their host galaxy.”

Supermassive black holes anchor most galaxies in the universe, with masses ranging from millions to billions of times that of the Sun. In active galactic nuclei (AGN), these central black holes both consume enormous amounts of surrounding material and unleash powerful jets that shape the galaxies around them.

This activity presents a longstanding puzzle. Because an AGN’s jets heat the surrounding gas, they should effectively cut off the black hole’s fuel supply, leaving astronomers to wonder how it continues to accrete matter.

Testing a Hypothesis

To investigate, the researchers tested the leading explanation: that heated gas eventually cools, condenses into long filaments, and falls back toward the galactic center, replenishing the black hole’s supply of material.

They turned JWST toward one of the best natural laboratories for studying AGN: the galaxy NGC 4696, located at the heart of the Centaurus Cluster, roughly 145 million light-years from Earth.

Using JWST’s NIRSpec instrument, the team collected eight hours of observations, mapping the motion of gas deep within the galaxy—where the black hole’s gravitational influence dominates—at a resolution of about 30 light-years.

Their observations revealed an 800-light-year-wide disk of gas orbiting the supermassive black hole at roughly 600 kilometers per second. Connected to this rapidly rotating disk was a large infalling filament, funneling gas inward to feed the AGN.

Feeding Cycle of the Black Hole

The discovery fills in a crucial missing piece of the puzzle surrounding how supermassive black holes sustain themselves. The researchers propose that after the black hole injects energy into the surrounding gas, heating it, that material eventually cools and collapses into thin filaments stretching hundreds of thousands of light-years. Guided by magnetic fields, these filaments then fall toward the galaxy’s center, where they accumulate in the rotating accretion disk.

The team also ran a series of computer simulations based on this model and found that the predicted behavior closely matched what JWST observed. While additional observations will be needed to confirm the results, the findings provide strong support for the filament-feeding hypothesis.

“It’s been really exciting to participate in this project,” co-author Mark Voit, an MSU Physics and Astronomy Professor, said in a statement.

“Calculations done by our Michigan State group predict that magnetic fields should help feed the universe’s biggest black holes by channeling cool gas toward them, and it’s amazing to see that happening in these JWST images,” he added.

The paper, “JWST Reveals How Lack Holes Are Fed: Kiloparsec-Scale Multiphase Filaments Feed Sub-Kiloparsec Circumnuclear Disks,” appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on July 14, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is celebrating four years of unexpectedly strong performance by providing a deep new view into one of the universe’s most familiar galaxies: Centaurus A.

Typically, Centaurus A’s thick dust obscures astronomers’ attempts to peer into it, yet the JWST’s near- and mid-infrared sensitivity allows scientists to see more of the galaxy than ever before. 

In new images released by NASA to celebrate JWST’s four years of impressive discoveries, the most powerful telescope ever constructed reveals the dense collection of stars that make up the ever-changing Centaurus A galaxy.

Inside Centaurus A

Due to two crucial factors, Centaurus A is an extremely interesting galaxy for astronomers. It is highly active, offering an important opportunity to monitor galaxy and black hole growth while being relatively close by, at just 11 million light-years away—a highly unusual combination.

The history of imaging Centaurus A is marked by questions, which JWST has now begun to answer. Webb’s predecessor, Hubble, could only view visible light in its examinations, leaving the galaxy’s central regions obscured by dust. Additionally, the Spitzer Space Telescope lacked sufficient resolution to resolve individual stars in infrared, although the data it collected provided new discoveries of massive dust structures.

Powerful events are on display in Centaurus A, the aftermath of a collision with another galaxy and a supermassive black hole’s active feeding. As the black hole releases powerful jets and gushes energy, it shapes the surrounding galaxy, which still retains an unusual shape left by its two-billion-year-old merger.

“No single telescope tells the whole story,” said Shawn Domagal-Goldman, division director, Astrophysics, NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Discoveries build over time, and new observatories expand on the foundations laid by earlier missions. Webb represents the most powerful step forward yet, opening a window into wavelengths and details never before accessible. This allows astronomers to examine structures and processes that other telescopes could not see.”

JWST Reveals Amazing Structures

Thanks to JWST’s mid-infrared capabilities, astronomers captured detailed images of Centaurus A’s dust structures and were surprised and confused by the glowing shapes revealed. One unusual feature is a band cutting across the galactic center, shaped like a warped parallelogram, with wispy tendrils stretching out of it.

Another feature, shaped like the letter “S,” also confounds astronomers, leaving many questions about the influence of both the central black hole and the galactic merger on its shape and evolution. 

A large portion of the red glowing dots in the image above represent dusty areas, either dust-rich stars or stellar nurseries, both important sources of dust for star formation, and therefore, the continuance of the galaxy.

Single Stars and JWST

The JWST’s incredible resolution is allowing astronomers to study the galaxy star by star for the first time. Combining images from the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) revealed tightly packed individual stars.

This view of individual stars is essential for what some astronomers call “galactic archaeology,” by providing important clues that help scientists reconstruct the galaxy’s formation and evolution. This galactic timeline is made up of many important pieces revealed by individual stars, such as when the oldest stars formed, when star formation slowed, when the merger reignited a powerful burst of star formation, and how that collision stirred the galaxy’s gases, further accelerating star formation.

Capturing these details requires spectroscopy, a technique where light is broken down to reveal detailed information about distant stars. Also using this technique, researchers can gain important information about the central black hole, identifying that it can both compress gas to accelerate star formation and push gas away to limit it.

On its fourth anniversary, the unprecedented details now revealed about one of our most interesting galactic neighbors continue to underscore the JWST’s incredible promise as NASA’s premier space observatory.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations have revealed that the fate of planets after the death of their host star may be surprisingly warm, according to new research from the University of St Andrews.

The JWST observations offer a possible glimpse into what our solar system will be like billions of years from now, particularly for gas giants like Jupiter. In a recent paper published in Nature, the St Andrew researchers describe JWST observations of WD 1856 b, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet much warmer than would be expected for orbiting a dead white dwarf star.

Webb Observes WD 1856 b

A collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, the JWST has provided an unprecedented view of the distant edges of the universe, revealing many unexpected finds. Among these surprises was WD 1856 b, whose mass, temperature, and atmosphere readings reveal a surprisingly intact planet after the death of its star.

Our own Sun is projected to exhaust its supply of hydrogen in roughly five billion years, after which it will expand into a red giant star about 100 times larger than it is today, before shedding mass in its final transformation into a white dwarf star.

In the distant future, the Sun’s transformations will likely someday obliterate Mercury, Venus, and even Earth, yet scientists have remained uncertain about how more distant planets will fare. Only by observing real-world examples of planets orbiting dead stars can scientists gather more data on how these scenarios play out for the remaining planets, as with JWST’s observations of WD 1856 b.

A Strange System

Discovered in 2020 by the TESS survey and the Spitzer space telescope, WD 1856 b orbits the white dwarf star WD 1856+534 at a distance of around 80 light-years from Earth.

“The planet is quite the oddball. It’s about the size of Jupiter, but the white dwarf it orbits is the size of Earth, so the planet is seven times larger than its star,” said lead author Dr. Ryan MacDonald from the University of St Andrews.

Perhaps the most confounding element of this system is how close the exoplanet is to its host star. At a distance of 50 times closer than the Earth is to the Sun, the planet is at a distance at which the star’s red giant phase should have destroyed it. How the planet managed to escape the destruction while ultimately ending up so close to its star intrigued the St. Andrews team.

James Webb Space Telescope Data

As WD 1856 b performed a grazing transit, where just its top edge passed in front of the host star, JWST observations allowed the researchers to crucially measure mass and temperature data, allowing them to estimate its mass at between four and eleven times that of Jupiter.

“We’re used to looking back in time when we use telescopes, but this is the first time we have been able to look forward to what might happen to the outer planets around the remnant of a Sun-like star,” MacDonald said, adding that “it’s like using a time machine to peer into the distant future of our Solar System.”

Infrared light emitted by the planet’s own heat showed a surprising temperature of 126°C, which is 240°C hotter than it would be from the white dwarf’s heat alone.

JWST Tells The Future

As the team worked on the problem, the temperature mystery proved to be the answer to the distance issue.

“The big question is how WD 1856 b ended up where it is today, and there are two theories. One is that the planet was swallowed by the host star as it was dying, and managed to survive on the inside,” said Dr. Christopher O’Connor of Northwestern University. “The other is that the migration took place due to the gravitational effect of other objects in the system. The white dwarf is part of a triple star system, and the outer companion stars could have influenced WD 1856 b’s orbit.”

Since no present source of energy should be capable of generating this much heat on the exoplanet, the researchers suggest that it represents heat left over from being engulfed by the red giant or possibly through an inward migration. Cooling models the team analyzed indicated that the planet likely first captured heat about 3 to 3.5 billion years ago, then cooled to its present temperature and migrated closer to its host star.

“This is just the beginning of our exploration of planets orbiting dead stars with Webb, and the search for further planets orbiting white dwarfs is ongoing,” Dr. MacDonald concluded. “Our results show that stellar death is not the end – some planets experience a vibrant and lively future after the death of their star.”

The paper, “Aerosol and Hydrocarbons in the Atmosphere of a White Dwarf Planet,” appeared in Nature on July 1, 2026.

Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.