This star-studded galaxy is the Circinus galaxy, a nearby spiral galaxy about 13 million light-years away, as seen by NASAHubble.⁣ Circinus has an active supermassive black hole at its center. These black holes remain active by consuming surrounding gas and dust. When matter gets close to the black hole, a donut-shaped ring called a torus can form around it. Then, matter from the “donut” can get pulled into the black hole itself and make a disk – like a whirlpool of water swirling around a drain. This disk grows hotter through friction, eventually becoming hot enough to emit light. Check out NASAWebb to see an artist’s concept of what this could look like!⁣ The resulting light – plus light from the stars we see in the image – can make it hard to see details within the galaxy’s center with ground-based telescopes. However, Webb was able to observe Circinus in infrared light, revealing the interaction between the black hole and matter that we mentioned above.⁣ Image description: The b...