The enrichment in metals (any element heavier than hydrogen and helium, including carbon, oxygen, iron and gold) likely came from generations of exploding stars, according to new observations from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
This panorama shows the central region of the Milky Way Galaxy. It builds on previous surveys from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, and expands Chandra’s high-energy view farther above and below the plane of the Galaxy than previous imaging campaigns. X-rays from Chandra are orange, green, and purple, showing different X-ray energies, and the radio data from MeerKAT are gray. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UMass / Q.D. Wang / NRF / SARAO / MeerKAT.
“We know there’s a black hole (Sagittarius A*) at the center of our Galaxy pulling material into itself, but we see that it’s eating a lot less material than other supermassive black holes, and more slowly,” said McGill University Ph.D. student Nicole Ford, first author of a study published in the Astronomical Journal.
“Part of understanding why this is happening means looking at the properties of the materials available for it to consume, including gas, dust and the stars orbiting around it.”
For the study, Ford and her colleagues analyzed data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope measures infrared light over a wide range of wavelengths with unprecedented spectral and spatial resolution.
This allowed the authors to distinguish the heat signatures of multiple gas clouds orbiting near Sagittarius A*.
It also enabled them to precisely measure the metal composition of each gas cloud.
In a companion study, published in the Astrophysical Journal, McGill University astronomer Mayura Balakrishnan and colleagues looked for signs in the gas of past energy bursts from the black hole.
They found that local conditions shape the gas emission so strongly that the black hole’s influence is hard to separate out.
This doesn’t rule out past outbursts, but it means the gas can’t serve as a reliable record of the black hole’s history.
“The understanding how the black hole attracts material will require comparing these observations with simulations of how gas evolves over longer timescales,” Ford said.
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Nicole M. Ford et al. 2026. Ionization Structure and Metal Enrichment of the Galactic Center Minispiral Observed with JWST. AJ 172, 267; doi: 10.3847/1538-3881/ae994d
Mayura Balakrishnan et al. 2026. Isolating Sgr A East: The First Uncontaminated X-Ray Maps of a Galactic Center Supernova Remnant. ApJ 1003, 128; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae5dbe
