The James Webb Space Telescope will investigate the strangely flashing black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, which has eluded previous telescopes.

Webb will collaborate with a number of telescopes to better understand the nature of Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole whose inclination to flare up on an hourly basis makes imaging difficult.

A crew from the Event Horizon Telescope will join the Webb investigators. In 2019, the EHT, which is made up of eight ground-based radio telescopes, obtained the first-ever photograph of a black hole, M87*.

Despite being closer to M87*, Sagittarius Aflickering *'s nature makes the Milky Way's own supermassive black hole a considerably more difficult target, according to Webb officials.

"While M87’s core presented a steady target, Sagittarius A* exhibits mysterious flickering flares on an hourly basis, which make the imaging process much more difficult," Webb officials wrote in late 2021. "Webb will assist with its own infrared images of the black hole region, providing data about when flares are present that will be a valuable reference to the EHT team."

Flares occur when charged particles are propelled to greater energy around the black hole, resulting in light emission.

Webb, which was launched on December 25 and is currently through a months-long commissioning process, will eventually image Sagittarius A* in two infrared wavelengths from a perch in deep space, free of stray light. Because EHT is on the ground, the expectation is that the data collected from Webb will complement the ground-based network data, resulting in a cleaner, easier-to-understand image.

Webb and EHT operating together, according to collaborators, will reveal more information about what generates the flares, which could lead to new insights into black holes, solar flares, and particle and plasma physics in general.

"We want to know how the universe works, because we are part of the universe. Black holes could hold clues to some of these big questions," study principal investigator Farhad Yusef-Zadeh, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University in Illinois, said in the same statement.

The first physical black hole was discovered in 1971, according to the news release, and the first EHT photograph of M87* in 2019 offered "direct visual proof that Einstein’s black hole prediction was correct."

The scientists went on to say that black holes constitute a "proving ground" for Einstein's theory, and that this first partnership between Webb and EHT will allow for additional telescope time in space in the future.