NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has released a stunning new image of a spiral galaxy with its bright center. The image shows Messier 77, which is located about 45 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus (about 6 trillion miles per light-year).
At the center of the galaxy is a supermassive black hole that is about 8 million times more massive than the Sun. The black hole is sucking in surrounding gas, spinning so fast that it heats up to the point where it emits intense radiation.
This extraordinarily bright center is exactly what NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured with its infrared instruments, revealing the galaxy’s deep structure. The telescope, which launched in 2021, is considered one of the most powerful observatories in the universe and continues to reveal new details of distant galaxies.
