(IMAGE)
Caption
Giant quasar and little red dots. A NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) NIRCam picture of the luminous quasar J1148+5251, an extremely rare active supermassive black hole of 10 billion solar masses. The quasar’s light, the orange star-like source with six clear diffraction spikes, was emitted 13 billion years ago. The existence of such massive black holes in the young Universe poses an important challenge to black hole and galaxy formation theories. Simultaneously, the image captured small, point-like red objects, the so-called little red dots. Several such objects appear in virtually every deep JWST image. Like the quasar J1148+5251, the light from these objects (that in these cases was emitted 12.5 billion years ago) is also powered by supermassive black holes. However, these black holes are a factor of hundred to a thousand lower in mass and heavily obscured by dust (making them appear red). The little red dots could represent galaxies that are in an evolutionary phase that predates the luminous quasar phase, and therefore help researchers understand the formation and role of supermassive black holes in distant galaxies.
The image was taken as part of the EIGER project.
Credit
© NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Matthee (ISTA), R. Mackenzie (ETH Zurich), D. Kashino (National Observatory of Japan), S. Lilly (ETH Zurich)
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