Even NASA’s next-generation space observatory can’t manage to see supermassive black holes directly, but that doesn’t mean astronomers can’t use its data to better understand the mysterious behemoths.
The opportunities are even on display in the first science-quality images from the James Webb Space Telescope (nicknamed JWST or Webb) that NASA unveiled on July 12. Although supermassive black holes proper are invisible to all observatories that gather light, JWST will be able to observe the structures indirectly.
It has already, in fact. Consider the new portrait of five galaxies that appear to be locked in a cosmic dance. “The picture that we showed you of Stephan’s Quintet is beautiful, and it tells you so many things in one picture,” John Mather of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the senior program scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, said during a news conference held on July 19 by the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in connection with its annual assembly, which was held last week in Athens.
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