Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered water and silicate dust surviving near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole. Reported on August 11, 2026, the findings show that the dying star IRS 3 continues to seed its extreme galactic neighborhood with material despite intense radiation from Sagittarius A*.
At the center of our galaxy lurks a supermassive black hole: a ravenous object capable of devouring matter that strays too close. Yet new observations from the JWST suggest that right in that black hole’s cosmic neighborhood, a dying star is still casting matter back out into space. Not all stars are massive enough to die as explosive supernovae that outshine entire galaxies like brilliant cosmic disco balls. Instead, stars born with up to around eight times the mass of our Sun become bloated, reddish, and cool, gradually losing their outer layers into space before becoming zombified white dwarfs.
Whether through the violent chemical enrichment of supernovae or that of slowly shriveling suns, stellar death births life. As Carl Sagan famously observed, We are made of star-stuff.
Now, astronomers have detected some of the most important star-stuff of all, including water, dust, and other oxygen-based chemistry products, in some of the most inhospitable conditions imaginable.
Stellar Life and Death 0.55 Light-Years From Sagittarius A*
The research focuses on the evolved star IRS 3, located just 0.55 light-years from Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass monster at the energetic heart of the Milky Way. Located 26,000 light-years from Earth, IRS 3 is an asymptotic giant branch star in a late stage of its life. Based on models and observations, researchers inferred that the star may have been born as far away as 16 light-years from the galactic center before migrating inward. It is about six times as massive as the Sun and approximately 72 million years old, with an effective temperature of 2,800 kelvins—about 2,500 degrees Celsius—while shining 60,000 times brighter than our Sun.
“Galactic centers are among the most extreme environments, so understanding whether stars can continue enriching their surroundings there is an important question,” explains Florian Peißker, an astrophysicist at the University of Cologne in Germany and lead author of a study detailing this discovery. “With Webb, we can directly observe how stars behave under these conditions and see that dust production remains remarkably resilient.”
Florian Peißker, astrophysicist at the University of Cologne
The star’s powerful stellar winds blast its outer layers into space at estimated speeds of 15 kilometers per second. This activity has surrounded IRS 3 with an immense dusty envelope extending 10,000 astronomical units.
Revisiting the Chemistry of IRS 3 With Infrared Instruments
To map the structure of the star’s envelope, a team of astronomers combined spectral data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument with models simulating how starlight travels through different dust configurations. The observations, published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, overturned an earlier classification of IRS 3.
Previous data had indicated that the star’s large dust envelope implied it was rich in carbon. However, the mid-infrared data revealed two strong infrared signatures of silicate dust composed of silicon and oxygen, proving an oxygen-rich chemistry.
“This is the first time a continuous mid-infrared spectrum has been collected for this star, allowing us to detect the features from the silicate dust and uncover the star’s true chemical identity.”
Macarena Garcia Marin, ESA scientist for Webb’s MIRI instrument and principal investigator of the MICONIC program
Surviving Intense Radiation Near a Supermassive Black Hole
Within the stellar envelope, researchers also detected traces of water. Temperatures near the star hover around 1,200 kelvins, while the outer layers average about 100 kelvins, or minus 173 degrees Celsius. Finding water this close to a supermassive black hole challenges the assumption that galactic centers are too extreme for this process to happen at all.
“The detection of water is especially exciting because it shows that molecular material can survive in an environment dominated by intense radiation.”
Macarena Garcia Marin, researcher at the European Space Agency
The discovery demonstrates that aging stars can continue supplying chemically rich space dust and water to galactic centers despite hostile radiation fields. As researchers continue analyzing data from the region, the resilience of these molecular structures highlights how stellar death actively sustains the galactic lifecycle even in the most extreme cosmic neighborhoods.
