A New Type of Galaxy

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Logo: News from the Universe. 

 

Text: January 17, 2025. A New Type of Galaxy. Webb CEERS Survey. One of the first discoveries by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope were unexpectedly bright "little red dot" galaxies in the early universe. Astronomers now have new clues about their nature. We fly through a deep field image full of galaxies. 

 

Text: In a majority of little red dots, Webb detected gas orbiting over 2 million miles per hour, a sign of an accretion around a supermassive black hole. LRD Examples. Six different red dots of different sizes and intensities appear in a grid, each with its own name. 

 

Text: There is still much to learn about these strange galaxies. 

 

Unlike more familiar black holes, the disks around these objects aren't bright in X-ray light. 

 

The centers o the dots are pale yellow or white and the discs around them are bright red, with red wisps around the exterior. 

 

Text: Numbers of little red dots decrease rapidly 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, and are not seen in the universe closer to our time. 

 

Astronomers will continue to investigate the outstanding mysteries of little red dots with Webb, the only telescope that has been able to detect them. 

 

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The six example dots have a z rating from 4.75 to 8.92. 

 

Text: This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD.