Free Astronomy Magazine November-December 2026

24 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING and other materials important for the creation of future generations of stars and planets. “Galactic centres are among the most extreme environments, so un- derstanding whether stars can con- tinue enriching their surroundings there is an important question,” said lead author Florian Peißker of the University of Cologne in Germany. “With Webb, we can directly ob- serve how stars behave under these conditions and see that dust produc- tion remains remarkably resilient.” IRS 3 is one of the brightest mid-in- frared sources in the galactic centre and has long stood out because of its enormous dusty envelope. Previous studies suggested the star could be carbon-rich, but the new observa- tions paint a different picture. The Webb data revealed two strong in- frared signatures associated with sil- icate dust, which is composed of silicon and oxygen. These features identify IRS 3 as an oxygen-rich e- Dust and water can survive in spite of Sagittarius A* by NASA/ESA/CSA Bethany Downer U sing the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, an in- ternational team of astron- omers have discovered that dust and water can form and survive surpris- ingly close to the supermassive black hole at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy. The observations reveal that the evolved star IRS 3 continues to enrich its surroundings with newly formed material despite the intense radiation environment around Sag- ittarius A*. The new observations provide the most detailed mid-infrared view yet of the highly evolved star IRS 3, which is located just 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. IRS 3 has reached a stage near the end of its life called the asymp- totic giant branch phase. Stars in this phase of life are huge, cool, and lu- minous, and they shed gas into space with their powerful stellar winds. This cast-off stellar material is T his image features data from Webb’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared In- strument) to capture the most de- tailed mid-infrared view yet of the field that hosts the highly evolved star IRS 3, which is located just 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way galaxy’s central super- massive black hole. [ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, F. Peißker, J. Lu, F. Yusef-Zadeh, N. B. Sabha, C. Chan] one of the most important sources of cosmic dust, but it was not clear if it could be produced by a star so close to a supermassive black hole. By analysing the star’s infrared light with Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instru- ment (MIRI), the research team iden- tified clear signatures of oxygen-rich dust and, for the first time, detected water in the star’s surrounding enve- lope. The results show that even under the harsh conditions near a supermassive black hole, evolved stars like IRS 3 can still produce dust