Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered a mysterious object from the extremely early universe. They suggest it is the precursor to the so-called “Little Red Spot,” one of a series of mysterious compact objects that are just beginning to form. Their nature is still a matter of debate, but a growing body of observations suggests that many of them may contain rapidly growing supermassive black holes.
A young and dense galaxy
Astronomers have, for the first time, identified a source that is in the process of becoming a Little Red Dot, using the James Webb Space Telescope. Little Red Dots are likely early galaxies and among the most intriguing objects discovered by James Webb at high redshifts. According to phys.org , a team led by Karina Caputi of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands announced the discovery at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS 2026) in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Little Red Dots, or LRDs, contain massive, active black holes whose presence is difficult to explain at such an early time in cosmic history. Understanding how these objects formed is currently one of the most important questions in extragalactic astronomy.
The source discovered by Caputi and her colleagues is a small so-called starburst galaxy, observed during the first 10 million years of its formation. This galaxy is forming stars rapidly. It is so young and dense that James Webb’s spectrum shows only Balmer emission lines, produced by hydrogen transitions, with no metal lines at all.
The formation of a Little Red Dot
Astronomers concluded that this is a precursor to an LRD because this small galaxy contains an active black hole that is already large. This suggests that the black hole may have formed before the galaxy itself, which is thought to happen in LRDs. Rapid star formation helps the black hole grow further by driving a flow of fresh gas from the dark-matter halo toward the center. This happens through gravity.
The source lies at a redshift of z = 6, meaning that its light was emitted only 1 billion years after the Big Bang — the Universe is now 13.8 billion years old — and it was detected because its light was magnified by a factor of 16 through the effect of gravitational lensing by a foreground galaxy cluster.
A metal-free galaxy spectrum
Caputi and her colleagues studied many small, distant galaxies with the James Webb telescope. Most of them have spectra with several emission lines. The spectrum of this source caught their attention because of the complete absence of metal lines, which is extremely rare in star-forming galaxies, since metals are produced very quickly when new star formation takes place.
Caputi sees this discovery as “a fundamental step toward understanding the formation of LRDs.” The team is now planning further observations with James Webb and the ALMA Observatory in Chile.
