A New Infrared Portrait of a Cosmic Powerhouse
For more than a century, astronomers have studied the jet blasting from M87’s heart. The James Webb Space Telescope has now captured the clearest infrared portrait yet, revealing fresh details about how the black hole drives this immense outflow. The image shows a luminous pink ribbon unfurling across a hazy violet backdrop, tracing a stream of charged particles that extend several thousand light-years from the central black hole. In a historic first for infrared astronomy, Webb also reveals a faint counter-jet on the opposite side, about 6,000 light-years away.
Inside the Inner Jet: Helical Structure and Knots
Using JWST’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), a team led by Jan Röder imaged the jet in four infrared bands. To isolate the jet, scientists carefully removed overlapping starlight, dust, and background galaxies, yielding the most detailed infrared portrait of M87’s outflow to date. Near the core, the jet exhibits a helical form. The bright knot known as HST-1 appears to split into two substructures with different emission properties, indicating shocks and complex particle dynamics near the black hole. Closer still, a slower-moving feature nicknamed knot L is visible in the new image, offering clues about how plasma accelerates to near-light speeds in these extreme environments.
The Distant Counter-Jet
Farther out, Webb detects the faint counter-jet about 6,000 light-years from the black hole. It appears as two filaments connected by a hotspot, forming a subtle C-shape that aligns with prior radio observations. The ability to see both the jet and its dim counterpart in infrared helps astronomers compare particle populations and magnetic field structures across different scales.
What Webb Teaches About Jet Physics
A central takeaway is that the M87 jet shines through synchrotron radiation — light produced when charged particles spiral around magnetic fields. By comparing color differences across the four infrared bands, the team traced how particles accelerate, then cool and twist as they travel along the jet. The infrared data complement radio and optical observations, providing a more complete picture of how energy is transported from the black hole to vast distances of the galaxy.
Why This Matters for Black Hole Laboratories
M87 and its famously photographed black hole, M87*, have long served as a natural laboratory for extreme physics. The JWST image adds a crucial infrared perspective to our understanding of how jets launch, collimate, and propagate—the processes that regulate star formation and galaxy evolution on cosmic scales. By resolving features like HST-1’s substructures and knot L, the observations constrain models of magnetic field geometry and particle acceleration near supermassive black holes, guiding theories that apply to active galactic nuclei across the universe.
Looking Ahead
The JWST observations of M87’s jet demonstrate the power of infrared astronomy to reveal faint structures hidden in other wavelengths. As Webb continues to chart nearby active galaxies, researchers anticipate new insights into jet physics, high-energy particle lifecycles, and the complex interplay between black holes and their galactic hosts. The result is not only a richer portrait of M87 but a brighter window into how the most energetic processes shape the cosmos.
