Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars. The results are reported in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Astronomers have long been puzzled by the origins of supermassive black holes—enormous objects found at the center of most galaxies, including our own Milky Way. These black holes can weigh millions or even billions of times more than the sun.

Researchers from the Nevada Center for Astrophysics at UNLV (NCfA) have found strong evidence in a study published in Nature Astronomy that suggests Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy,