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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will stare into a BLACK hole; Shall we know the secrets now?


Next month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will carry out an important mission to observe the supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy known as ‘Sauron’s eye’. Know what scientists are trying to figure out.

While we are still waiting for the first images taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the space observatory is on a historic mission. In July, the Webb telescope will look into the ‘Eye of Sauron’. No, we’re not giving a Lord of the Rings reference, that’s the name of a nearby spiral galaxy, which looks like the iconic movie icon. Officially named NGC 4151, the galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. And the seemingly impossible task that the NASA telescope has been assigned is to find out how much a black hole weighs.

This task is not easy because black holes cannot be seen. Their gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape it. And since light is not reflected back, not being able to understand its size is important for estimating the mass of any celestial body. But according to a report by Inverse, this is exactly what NASA intends to do through their brand new space telescope.

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to Look into the Eye of Sauron

Even if the black hole can’t be seen, astronomers still have some tricks up their sleeve. The supermassive black hole in question exerts such a strong attraction that the stars in the innermost ring of galaxy NGC 4151 have been pulled in and continuously orbit the black hole. The Webb Telescope has an instrument called the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) that can observe and measure the speed at which these stars orbit the black hole. The faster the stars spin, the more mass in the black hole. Using this data, astronomers believe they can calculate its mass.

However, this task is not easy. To see the stars, NASA’s telescope would have to look through the bright light emitted by the black hole’s accretion disk, which covers the background of stars. Catching the starlight would be a difficult task like this. But scientists are confident that the James Webb Space Telescope has been equipped with instruments so sharp that this is unlikely.





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