Imagine solar flares, but on a mind-boggling scale. A constant scintillation that is bright enough to shine across 26,000 light-years of space. And interspersed between the flickers, brilliant flashes that spew out on a daily basis.

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have spotted this activity in the center of our galaxy. The source is the accretion disk around the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. Webb detected brightness changes over remarkably short timescales, meaning they are coming from the black hole’s inner disk, not far beyond its event horizon.

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