|
APOD: 2025 December 24 Á Mystery: Little Red Dots in the Early Universe
Explanation:
What are these little red dots (LRDs)?
Nobody knows.
Discovered only last year, hundreds of
LRDs have now been found by the
James Webb Space Telescope in the
early universe.
Although extremely faint,
LRDs are now frequently identified in
deep observations made for other purposes.
A wide-ranging debate is raging about what
LRDs may be and what importance they may have.
Possible origin hypotheses include
accreting supermassive black holes inside clouds of gas and dust,
bursts of
star formation in young dust-reddened galaxies, and
dark matter powered gas clouds.
The highlighted images show six nearly featureless LRDs
listed under the JWST program that found them, and z,
a distance indicator called
cosmological redshift.
Additionally,
searches are underway in our nearby universe to try to find whatever previous LRDs might have
become today.
| << Yesterday | 24.12.2025 | Tomorrow >> |
|
January February March April May June July August September October November December |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day