Meet a monster black hole at the dawn of time

An international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. Hear the story from the study’s lead author, Dr. Anthony Taylor, in the player above or on YouTube.

• Astronomers have spotted a monster black hole at the dawn of time. It existed when the universe was just 3% of its current age.
• It’s the earliest confirmed black hole. It lies at the heart of galaxy CAPERS-LRD-z9 and has a massive reddish cloud of gas around it.
• This black hole might provide insight into the Little Red Dots we see in the early universe. These are compact, red and unexpectedly bright galaxies only existed in the first 1.5 billion years.

The University of Texas at Austin published this original story on August 6, 2025. Edits by EarthSky.

Meet a distant, young monster black hole

An international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into the past, when our universe was just 3% of its current age. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to study the structure and evolution of this enigmatic period.

Anthony Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cosmic Frontier Center, led the team that made the discovery. Taylor said:

When looking for black holes, this is about as far back as you can practically go. We’re really pushing the boundaries of what current technology can detect.

Steven Finkelstein, a co-author on the paper and director of the Cosmic Frontier Center, said:

While astronomers have found a few, more distant candidates, they have yet to find the distinct spectroscopic signature associated with a black hole.

The team published their research in the peer-reviewed Astrophysical Journal on August 6, 2025.

How we know it’s a black hole

With spectroscopy, astronomers split light into its many wavelengths to study an object’s characteristics. To identify black holes, they search for evidence of fast-moving gas. As it circles and falls into a black hole, the light from gas moving away from us is stretched into much redder wavelengths. And light from gas moving toward us is compressed into much bluer wavelengths. Taylor explained:

There aren’t many other things that create this signature. And this galaxy has it!

The team used data from the James Webb Space Telescope’s CAPERS (CANDELS-Area Prism Epoch of Reionization Survey) program for its search. Launched in 2021, JWST provides the most far-reaching views into space available. And CAPERS provides observations of the outermost edge.

Mark Dickinson, a co-author on the paper and the CAPERS team lead, said:

The first goal of CAPERS is to confirm and study the most distant galaxies. JWST spectroscopy is the key to confirming their distances and understanding their physical properties.

Now meet the Little Red Dots

Initially seen as an interesting speck in the program’s imagery, CAPERS-LRD-z9 turned out to be part of a new class of galaxies known as Little Red Dots. Present only in the first 1.5 billion years of the universe, these galaxies are very compact, red and unexpectedly bright.

Finkelstein explained:

The discovery of Little Red Dots was a major surprise from early JWST data, as they looked nothing like galaxies seen with the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, we’re in the process of figuring out what they’re like and how they came to be.

CAPERS-LRD-z9 may help astronomers do just that.

For one, this galaxy adds to mounting evidence that supermassive black holes are the source of the unexpected brightness in Little Red Dots. Usually, that brightness would indicate an abundance of stars in a galaxy. However, Little Red Dots exist at a time when such a large mass of stars is unlikely.

On the other hand, black holes also shine brightly. That’s because they compress and heat the materials they’re consuming, creating tremendous light and energy. By confirming the existence of one in CAPERS-LRD-z9, astronomers have found a striking example of this connection in Little Red Dots.

The newfound galaxy may also help answer what causes the distinct red color in Little Red Dots. That may be thanks to a thick cloud of gas surrounding the black hole, skewing its light into redder wavelengths as it passes through. Taylor said:

We’ve seen these clouds in other galaxies. When we compared this object to those other sources, it was a dead ringer.

This monster black hole can teach us

This galaxy is also notable for how colossal its black hole is. Estimated as up to 300 million times that of our sun, its mass measures up to half that of all the stars in its galaxy. Even among supermassive black holes, this is particularly big.

Finding such a massive black hole so early on provides astronomers a valuable opportunity to study how these objects developed. A black hole present in the later universe will have had diverse opportunities to bulk up during its lifetime. But one present in the first few hundred million years wouldn’t. Finkelstein said:

This adds to growing evidence that early black holes grew much faster than we thought possible. Or they started out far more massive than our models predict.

To continue their research on CAPERS-LRD-z9, the team hopes to gather more, higher-resolution observations using JWST. This could provide greater insight into it and the role black holes played in the development of Little Red Dots. Taylor said:

This is a good test object for us. We haven’t been able to study early black hole evolution until recently, and we are excited to see what we can learn from this unique object.

Bottom line: Astronomers have spotted a monster black hole at the dawn of time. It currently holds the record for earliest confirmed black hole. And it might provide insight into the Little Red Dots we see in the early universe.

Source: CAPERS-LRD-z9: A Gas-enshrouded Little Red Dot Hosting a Broad-line Active Galactic Nucleus at z = 9.288

Via The University of Texas at Austin

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