Plate Nº 31 · recorded October 10, 2026
Space & AstronomyReported finding
First Clean X-Ray Map Reveals Supernova Remnant Near Milky Way's Black Hole
Using NASA's Chandra data, astronomers produced the first uncontaminated X-ray maps of Sgr A East, a supernova remnant near the 4-million-solar-mass black hole Sagittarius A*.
By Nathan Brooks4 min read796 words
In brief
- Sgr A East sits closest to Sagittarius A*, a black hole of 4 million solar masses.
- The remnant is roughly 10,000 years old, though its exact age remains uncertain.
- The study appears in The Astrophysical Journal (2026), DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae5dbe.
- Researchers mapped iron, sulfur, argon and calcium inside the remnant.
- Chandra data were combined with radio and submillimeter observations for a composite view.
Astronomers have released the first X-ray images of the supernova remnant Sagittarius A East that are entirely free of contamination from other sources — a cleanup achievement in one of the most crowded and chaotic corners of our galaxy. The remnant sits closer to Sagittarius A*, the Milky Way's central black hole weighing 4 million solar masses, than any other supernova remnant astronomers know of.
The work, led by Mayura Balakrishnan and published in The Astrophysical Journal in 2026, used a special technique to separate three overlapping sources of X-rays in the galactic center. The result is the clearest view yet of stellar debris that has sat largely hidden amid gas, dust, strong magnetic fields and stars at every stage of life, from birth to death.
Why the galactic center is so hard to see
The region around Sagittarius A* (pronounced "A-star") is a cosmic traffic jam. Besides the black hole itself, it contains dense gas, dust and stellar clusters. That clutter makes it genuinely difficult to work out which light comes from which object.
Astronomers had previously identified the three main X-ray contributors in this patch of sky:
- The Sgr A East supernova remnant itself;
- Colliding winds from a cluster of hot, massive stars;
- A diffuse glow from many fainter, overlapping sources — mostly double-star systems in which sun-like stars orbit white dwarfs, the burned-out cores of dead stars.
The new composite image is the first in which Chandra's X-ray signal from Sgr A East arrives without mixing with those other two components.
How do you clean up an X-ray image?
Supernova remnants glow in X-rays for a straightforward reason. When a star explodes, powerful shock waves rumble outward into surrounding space, superheating the stellar debris to millions of degrees. Matter that hot radiates in X-rays, which NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory can detect.
Balakrishnan's team applied a separation technique that pulled apart the three main X-ray sources in the field. This did more than produce a prettier picture. The analysis also let the researchers build maps of the chemical elements inside the remnant, including iron, sulfur, argon and calcium — the raw material forged inside the star before it blew apart.
The team also removed pointlike X-ray sources from the image so they could study the remnant's diffuse emission — the spread-out glow of hot gas rather than the light of individual objects — in finer detail.
What does the new image actually show?
The composite combines data across three wavelength regimes:
- Green: lower-energy X-rays from Chandra;
- Light blue: high-energy X-rays from Chandra, which blend into purple in the remnant's middle;
- Red: radio data from the NSF's Very Large Array;
- Dark blue: submillimeter-wavelength data from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope.
The bright radio emission wraps around the X-rays from both Sgr A East and the region around Sagittarius A*. The supermassive black hole itself sits at the center of a yellow spiral structure to the right of the remnant's purple X-ray glow.
Has the remnant shaped the black hole's environment?
Because Sgr A East lies so close to Sagittarius A*, astronomers have long wondered whether the two influence each other. The new analysis supports the idea that the remnant has not been a passive bystander.
The researchers show that Sgr A East has expanded into the gas around it, compressing and heating it, and shaping the remnant's lopsided, asymmetric three-dimensional structure. Over the remnant's estimated lifetime of about 10,000 years — a figure that remains uncertain — it has injected energy into the region and kept the gas surrounding the black hole hot and turbulent.
The cleaner view may also answer two standing questions: whether winds from the nearby cluster of massive stars have altered the remnant's evolution, and whether the explosion itself ever triggered outbursts from Sagittarius A* in the past. In addition, the element maps could help reveal the identity of the star that exploded to create Sgr A East.
How solid are the findings?
The separation technique represents a genuine methodological step forward, but some conclusions remain provisional. The remnant's age of roughly 10,000 years carries clear uncertainty, and questions about the progenitor star and past interactions with the black hole are still open. What the new maps provide is a cleaner starting point: for the first time, astronomers can study this supernova remnant's emission on its own, without first subtracting guesswork about neighboring sources.
The paper, "Isolating Sgr A East: The First Uncontaminated X-Ray Maps of a Galactic Center Supernova Remnant," by Mayura Balakrishnan and colleagues, appears in The Astrophysical Journal (2026), DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ae5dbe.
via Phys.org Space & Astronomy (Source)
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