The Starset SocietyBy: Rhodilee Jean Dolor
The most powerful space telescope built to observe the universe is paving the way for the discovery of celestial objects that scientists have never seen before.
In a new study, astronomers reported that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has spotted an extremely bright red spot in the early universe just 660 million years after the Big Bang.
A Star or a Black Hole?
Rohan Naidu, a NASA Hubble Fellow and Pappalardo Fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), and colleagues observed that the red dot resembles a massive star but produces 100 billion times more energy than other known stars.
The researchers said that the amount of power that the object blasts off is closer to what black holes are known to generate.
Stars are dense balls of gas fueled by nuclear fusion. Black holes, on the other hand, grow by consuming nearby matter such as gas, dust or materials from stars that stray too close to it through a process called accretion. They can also absorb other black holes.
Unlike stars, which are relatively easier to see because of their brightness, black holes are virtually invisible because not even light can escape their strong gravitational pull. They do not emit or reflect light and scientists detect them based on how they affect matter that surrounds them.
In their study published in the journal Nature on August 12, Naidu and colleagues said that the odd characteristics of the red dot that the JWST spotted suggest that the object could be a combination of a black hole and a star.
They think that the object—a dense cloud of gas that they are calling a black hole star, is not powered by nuclear fusion but by an accreting black hole at its core.
Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
If the spotted object is indeed a black hole star, researchers think it could shed light on the identity of the so-called little red dots (LRDs) that the JWST has been finding.
The compact objects were previously invisible to the Hubble Space Telescope but they were detected in abundant supply following the launch of the James Webb telescope in December 2021. The JWST is equipped with instruments that enable it to peek at the first stars and galaxies that formed during the infancy of the universe.
According to NASA, the little red dots emerged in large numbers around 600 million years after the birth of the universe but their quantity rapidly dropped around 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang.
Scientists consider different explanations to account for the little red dots and the black hole star scenario is a popular idea.
“I think part of the scientific community is converging on a singular picture — that little red dots can be explained by black hole star models,” said Vasily Kokorev, an astronomer from the University of Texas at Austin who led a study that analyzed a red dot known as GLIMPSE-17775. The research was published in the Astrophysical Journal in June 2026.
“While we think it’s a black hole, there are some other interesting theories being proposed, which is exciting. Maybe in a year or two, we’ll have the final answer to what powers these sources.”
Very Red and Very Bright
Naidu and colleagues found a “very red and very bright” dot while looking for galaxies that were formed from when the universe was a few hundred million years old.
They observed that the red dot’s light was extremely bright until it dipped at a certain wavelength. The phenomenon, known as Balmer break, is associated with dense gas soaking photons in the atmosphere of stars.
The team also found that the red dot’s light contained almost no signature of metals or elements other than hydrogen and helium.
The researchers ran simulations to determine what combination of astrophysical features could produce the distinct color of the red dot.Since the scale of energy observed is routinely produced by black holes, they decided to incorporate an active accreting black hole into their simulation.
They found that the most likely scenario to explain the characteristics of the red dot is a black hole star.
The simulations also suggest that the black hole at the core is about 100 times as massive as the sun. It is surrounded by a dense, star-like cocoon of hydrogen gas that appears to span the size of the solar system.
“You have something that looks a bit like a star but is 100 billion times brighter,” Naidu said in a statement. “That means you can’t be powering this by nuclear fusion, which is the energy source that sits at the heart of all the stars we have.”
MoM-BH*-1
The researchers named the object MoM-BH*-1 after the JWST survey that spotted it. The‘Mirage or Miracle’ (MoM) JWST program (GO-5224) observed the object using the NIRSpec instrument of the James Webb telescope.
The team also gave the object the moniker “black hole star – one” being the first of its kind.
“MoM-BH*-1 was selected as a high-priority target for spectroscopic follow-up based on its striking appearance in NIRCam images of the Ultra Deep Survey (UDS) extragalactic field,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
“It stood out as the reddest source in this approximately 250 arcmin2 field (F277W-F356W > 2.5 mag), appearing remarkably luminous (F444W = 25.4 mag) and unresolved at >3 μm, while apparently disappearing at shorter wavelengths.”
According to Naidu, the other red dots that appeared in JWST images are not as bright as MoM-BH*-1 but they are also likely black hole stars.
“Every little red dot is consistent with being a black hole star, embedded in a generic early galaxy,” Naidu said. “But what is special about MoM-BH*-1 is, the black hole star is essentially completely outshining its surrounding host galaxy, such that we’re seeing pure black hole star light.”
