Astronomers detected dust and water surprisingly close to the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, offering a rare direct view of how evolved stars may behave in hostile settings.<\/p>\n
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What it is: The region around the star IRS 3<\/p>\n
Where it is: 26,000 light-years from Earth<\/p>\n
This mesmerizing image may look pretty, but it captures a hostile environment: the turbulent region surrounding a dying star close to our galaxy's central black hole.<\/p>\n
This unprecedented view of the star IRS 3 (located near the center of the image) shows that it is shedding an enormous amount of material, gas and dust to build a sprawling envelope around itself. Within that star's envelope, scientists detected traces of water.<\/p>\n
Although astronomers have detected water near other stars before, this is the first time it's been found this close to the Milky Way's supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A*.<\/p>\n
The observations, described Aug. 11 in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, show that even in the harsh conditions surrounding a galaxy's central region, aging stars like IRS 3 may still be quietly seeding their surroundings with dust. That\u202c challenges the assumption that galactic centers are too extreme for this process to happen at all.<\/p>\n
"The detection of water is especially exciting because it shows that molecular material can survive in an environment dominated by intense radiation," study co-author Macarena Garcia Marin, a researcher at the European Space Agency, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The magical view was pieced together by combining data from the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-infrared Instrument.<\/p>\n
"This is the first time a continuous mid-infrared spectrum has been collected for this star, allowing us to detect the features from the silicate dust and uncover the star's true chemical identity," said Garcia Marin, who is also the principal investigator of the Mid-Infrared Characterization of Nearby Iconic galaxy Centers (MICONIC) program.<\/p>\n
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Another image shows where this star is located relative to Sagittarius A*: 0.55 light-years away.<\/p>\n
This image shows the location of the star IRS 3<\/p>\n
IRS 3 is no ordinary star \u2014 it belongs to a class of aging stars living in what astronomers call the asymptotic giant branch phase. In this late-life stage, stars are large and have relatively cool temperatures, and high luminosity. They blow off layers of their own material through intense stellar winds, and that castoff material seeds the universe with cosmic dust.<\/p>\n