JWST finds dust and water surviving near the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
15 Sep 2026
New observations reveal that stars can continue creating the building blocks of future stars and planets even in extreme environments.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have discovered that dust and water can form and survive remarkably close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way Galaxy. The findings provide new insight into how stars continue to enrich their surroundings even in some of the most extreme environments in space.
The international team, including scientists from UK ATC, studied IRS 3, an evolved star located just 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A* (the Milky Way’s central black hole). Observations made with JWST’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) revealed clear signatures of oxygen-rich silicate dust and, for the first time, detected water in the star’s surrounding envelope.
UK ATC played a key role in the design and development of MIRI, which enabled researchers to collect these detailed mid-infrared observations needed to identify the star’s chemical composition and study the structure of its extensive dust envelope.
The results show that even under the harsh conditions near a supermassive black hole, evolved stars like IRS 3 can still produce dust and other materials important for the creation of future generations of stars and planets.
Dr Olivia Jones, Webb Fellow at UK ATC and co-author on this paper, said: “It’s exciting to see MIRI continuing to deliver discoveries that challenge our expectations. This result highlights the instrument’s unique ability to study the chemistry and physical conditions around stars in unprecedented detail. The galactic centre is very crowded so the ability to point MIRI at a star and get spectroscopy with very little contamination from other cosmic objects is a great example of the instrument’s power and precision. Detecting both dust and water so close to the Milky Way’s central black hole demonstrates that stars can continue supplying the raw materials for future generations of stars and planets, even under conditions once thought too hostile for these processes to occur.”
The observations were obtained in 2025 as part of the MICONIC (Mid-Infrared Characterisation of Nearby Iconic Galaxy Centres) programme and have been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
